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GQEOHGHX DEPOSIT. 



ACTIVISM 



ACTIVISM 



BY 

HENRY LANE ENO 

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE IN PSYCHOLOGY 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
PRINCETON, N. J. 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1920 






Copyright 1920, by 
Princeton University Press 

Published 1920 



©CI.A571987 



1 1 \m 




CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

i. Fundamental Conceptions i 

2. Activity as an Underlying Hypothesis 8 

3. Planes of Activity 30 

4. Units of Activity . . . .* 38 

5. Unitary Complexes 47 

6. Interrelation of the Different 

Planes 58 

7. Consciousness 92 

8. The Meta-psychic Plane 138 

9. Activism and the Historic Problems 

of Philosophy 144 

10. Conclusion 175 

Appendix 185 

Index 203 



PREFACE 

It is not without hesitation that the present essay 
is submitted to the public. 

It would seem, however, at this time especially, 
when all of us are groping for whatever stray 
gleams of light may come our way, that a possibly 
fresh point of view may not be entirely supereroga- 
tory. For in the midst of the cataclysmic changes 
taking place on every side many of us find ourselves 
forced to a new searching of the spirit. The older 
creeds and philosophies are crumbling or becoming 
metamorphosed. And in the intellectual world, no 
less than in the sphere of politics and industry, we 
are everywhere faced with the necessity of a revalu- 
ation of values. 

In philosophy a newer Idealism, Realism, and 
Pragmatism, as well as such iconoclastic doctrines 
as Behaviorism in psychology, and the Relational 
theory in physics, have swept many of the long re- 
ceived dogmas into a historic past ; while many old 
questions have been answered with surprising solu- 
tions, and many strange and hitherto unsuspected 
problems have been discovered to confront us. 

To meet some of these newer conditions— to 
envisage some of these many problems from a pos- 
sibly fresh angle — is the endeavor of the hypothesis 
here briefly outlined. The author is, nevertheless, 
acutely conscious of the tentative and sketchy char- 



PREFACE 

acter of this trial, as well as of its frequent short- 
comings both in substance and in style. 

It is, also, a cause of no small regret that it seems 
to have been necessary to use not a few new terms, in 
addition to several familiar words employed in such 
a fashion as to involve unusual connotations. The 
exigency in the development of a somewhat novel 
thesis, however, involving a descriptive terminology 
for which apparently there exists at present no ac- 
curate expressions, has forced the issue to a point 
where no practical alternative has been left. It can 
only be said in extenuation that as few strange 
words as possible have been used, and that a strenu- 
ous effort has been made to explain carefully these 
innovations. 

Finally, the author's thanks are due to Professor 
Edward Gleason Spaulding for his helpful sug- 
gestions and logical criticism; to Professor Au- 
gustus Trowbridge for his assistance in the interpre- 
tation of modern physics; to Professor Howard C. 
Warren for his revision of the chapter on Conscious- 
ness; and, particularly, in remembrance, for the 
kindly advice, and the many critical notes jotted 
down, by the late William James — now some years 
ago — upon the margins of the original sketch of 
which the present essay is the outgrowth. 

Henry Lane Eno. 
Princeton, New Jersey, 
May, 1920 



CHAPTER 1. 

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 

The universe of which we seem to be aware may 
be divided into three great classes — entities, rela- 
tions, and processes. 

Of these, entities and relations are fundamental; 
processes appear to be derivative, involving entities 
of some kind, relations of usually many kinds, but 
always, and especially, those relations to the time 
series which distinguish process as such. 

As to the exact status of these classes, philoso- 
phers differ. As to their actuality, all philosophers 
agree. Every mode of thought possesses an expres- 
sion for them. In physical science they are epito- 
mized in matter, and in the relational complexes of 
space, time, and motion. As organisms we are con- 
scious of them as existence, environment, and reac- 
tion; while in the poetic symbolism of the East 
they are known as being, wisdom, and power. They 
do not easily submit themselves to definition, for 
without cognizance of them no thinking is conceiv- 
able. Like Emerson's "Brahma", they include the 
thinker, his total environment, and his thought. 

Yet, although the universe thus seems to fall into 
three main divisions, not all philosophers have been 
fully alive to this obvious fact. On the contrary 
they have, from the earliest times, nearly always 

(l) 



2 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 

overemphasized some single aspect. "The World 
is eternal and immutable/' said Father Parmenides 
(Entity) ; "All things flow away and nothing re- 
mains^ said Heraclitus (Process) ; "Everything is 
relative, illusion — 'Maya' " said Sankara (Rela- 
tion) ; and their intellectual descendants are alive 
this very day. All things are generated from the 
immutable logical principles, says Russell (Realist) ; 
the whole universe is pure process, becoming, says 
Bergson (Pragmatist) ; everything is error and illu- 
sion, says Bradley (Idealist). 1 While, it is scarcely 
necessary to add, we possess every sort of philosophy 
exhibiting some more qualified overemphasis as the 
result of combinations and modifications of these 
extreme views. 

But this universe of ours is in some ways at least 
not only threefold but also one, since after all it is 
a universe, ordered to some extent, so far as we have 
been able to explore it, and not a chaos. As a uni- 
verse of total inclusion it is undoubtedly one, as well 
as in its character as a universe of discourse ; while 
for many essential considerations science is forced 
to maintain that it is a uniformity, subject through- 

1 Bertrand Russell : The Principles of Mathematics. Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1903. 

Henri Bergson: L/Evolution Creatrice. Felix Alcan, 
Paris, 1908. 

F. H. Bradley: Appearance and Reality. Swan, Sonnen- 
schein & Co., London, 1908. 



FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS -3 

out to inevitable laws. All monistic philosophical 
systems also, on speculative grounds, maintain its 
essential unity; and while their reasoning and con- 
clusions may perhaps be found faulty, yet from 
their wide acceptance and traditional importance 
they cannot be ignored. 

At the very start, therefore, should we care to dis- 
cuss cosmology at all, we find ourselves confronted 
with the ancient but ever youthful problem of the 
one and the many. That the world is many is a fact 
that none but the solipsist can question ; and even for 
him the content of his own mind is manifold. More- 
over one does not argue with the solipsist, one puts 
him in a sanitorium. 

Well; is the world also one? And if so, in what 
way and how much is it one ? 

We have seen that it is, pretty deeply at any rate, 
threefold, since we find everywhere the ultimate 
distinction between entities and relations, and, 
wherever time holds sway, those special relations 
between entity-complexes and moments in the time 
series which superadd the element of process. But 
can these great divisions into which it falls be 
united ; can the three great classes of its elements be 
in any way subsumed under one unifying concep- 
tion? 

Now in attempting to answer this question we 
shall probably be forced to admit at once that any 



4 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 

such unifying conception, in our present state of 
ignorance, can be at best but a working hypothesis. 
That such an hypothesis should possess wide theo- 
retic and empirical support, and that it should work 
— enable us to explain with its aid a greater number 
of difficulties than we could explain without it — is 
the most that reasonably can be expected. For the 
day of irrefutable philosophic systems is past. 

A working hypothesis of this kind, furthermore, 
from its very nature as such, must draw its chief 
support from empirical experience — from the world 
as we actually seem to find it — not as we might find 
it or prefer to find it. Our philosophic point of 
view, therefore, will be in the_main the point of 
view characterized as radical empiricism. Since we 
posit too,; for our purpose at any rate, a real uni- 
verse full of real entities, relations, and processes, 
it will also be a realistic philosophy avoiding as far 
as possible the ancient controversial problems as to 
whether the world is not after all merely appear- 
ance, illusion, or existent only in the mind of some 
Knower, or knowers. For whatever the ultimate 
character of the universe may be, it seems indisput- 
able that at least it appears as real, and so consti- 
tutes for us at any rate a real appearance. If 
therefore to hold this view makes us naive realists, 
we must let the soft impeachment lie, permitting 
ourselves cheerfully to be classed among the scien- 



FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 5 

tists, the poets, the religious teachers, and the 
practical men generally, who do real illusory things 
in a world of real illusion. 

Taking then the world in this way as it ap- 
pears, we find it full of a number of things — 
physical things, mental things, and things which 
seem to be neither. In this world of actual ex- 
perience, moreover, all of these things in their own 
various ways are efficient. They "make a differ- 
ence" somewhere. Any one of these things also, in 
so far as it is conceivably to be found at all, may 
from the fact of its conceivability alone, if from no 
other reason, be in essential relation with some sort 
of process. It is quite unessential that such a thing 
should itself be a process, a change, or be dependent 
for its existence or efficiency upon other processes. 
An ideal entity such as a geometrical figure, a rela- 
tion, or a relational complex, whether independently 
"real" or merely an intellectual construct, makes 
many differences, and among them differences in the 
world of process. It is of course evident that the 
efficiency of such unchangeables may be a non-causal 
efficiency, but that fact does not make them any less 
efficient. The existence, or "subsistence", of geo- 
metric triangles or circles not only is efficient in their 
own sphere of ideal space, but is equally efficient in 
determining the necessary course of the geometer's 
mental operations. Yet here the specific nature of a 



6 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 

process depends upon something which is not a 
process itself, a certain kind of change is deter- 
mined by a certain kind of unchangeable. 

Obviously however we also find processes depend- 
ing upon each other, either in relations of non-causal 
efficiency, or causal relations, or both; in general the 
strictly causal efficiencies being confined to the world 
of physical processes and non-causal relations obtain- 
ing between non-physical processes, as, for example, 
the efficient correlations of the ideal processes 
in theoretical dynamics. 

It seems evident therefore that any sort of entity, 
relation, process, or any complex of them, can be a 
determinant factor in some sort of process. It seems 
equally evident, also, that this determining efficiency 
does not depend upon the "existential" status of the 
determinants, — their status as existing in space or 
time — nor upon what their ultimate natures may be. 

They may be entities or processes real or 
ideal, relations, universale, values — whatever you 
will. The fact of their just being, whatever they 
really are in themselves, constitutes a ground for 
some process taking a different course from the 
course which it would pursue if such things were 
not. If the time-space condition, for example, with 
its ubiquitous relations to other existences was not a 
fact, no process at all would be possible. If the 
numerical series were absent no classification nor 



FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS 7 

differentiation could obtain. Without "values" no 
art nor morals could be imagined. All these things 
are efficient. They are that by reason of which 
processes — series of changes — occur at all. 

Now this particular sort of efficiency appears to 
be possessed by everything. There is nothing — 
even the conception of nothingness itself — from a 
chimera to an elephant, from an ideal or value to a 
nerve impulse, from a passing thought to an eternal 
platonic idea, but may be the ground for some sort 
of change; if in no other way, at least for the 
change incurred in our psychic or neural processes 
while thinking of it. And this special sort of effi- 
ciency we shall call, for want of some more accu- 
rate appellation, "Activity." 

"Activity", says Bradley, "is the scandal of phi- 
losophy." But scandal or not, activity in this broad 
sense is inescapable. For activity is that by reason 
of which change exists. 

Assuming, then, that all things conceivable can be 
considered as activities in this sense ; that all mem- 
bers of the three fundamental classes, entities, rela- 
tions,- and processes possess at least this one element 
in common, — can be subsumed under this universal 
conception; what sort of world shall we find inter- 
preted in this light? Will the hypothesis of such a 
common denominator make our universe any more 
intelligible? In short, will this hypothesis work? 



CHAPTER 2 

ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

We have tentatively defined activity as "that by 
reason of which change exists", and we have ad- 
vanced the hypothesis that everything in the universe 
of which we are aware is an activity in this sense 
of the term. Our hypothesis is, therefore, an under- 
lying hypothesis which maintains that there exists 
a fundamental class of being to which all things 
belong. This definition of activity however is not 
equivalent to a definition of mere being. For it is 
possible that there might exist beings, out of any 
relation by means of which a difference could be 
made in the world of process, and of which we could 
not even conceive, that would not be activities. The 
conception is, therefore, empirically but not logically, 
all inclusive. It is held to be true, nevertheless, of 
every object discoverable or imaginable, to which- 
ever of the three great subsidiary classes — entities, 
relations, or processes — that object may either ex- 
clusively or jointly belong. 

The reason for so sweeping a contention is that it 
seems impossible to discover any fact which does not, 
in some way, fall into this universal category. It is 
obviously true of all entities, whether "real" objects, 
or ideal conceptions. They all "make a difference" 
somewhere. It is also true of relations. For even if 

(8) 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 9 

a relation "as suck", for example "north of", seems 
to exist, or as Russell has it, "subsist" "nowhen and 
nowhere", it is nevertheless obviously a ground for a 
very specific sort of change, namely the physical 
motion or process required to traverse the distance 
between any material spot and that which it is "north 
of". In other words, the entirely definite process or 
change involved in "going north" can only occur 
because of such a relation as "north of". In this 
instance then "north of" is not only an activity in 
general, but a quite specific kind of activity upon 
which directly depends a quite specific kind of 
change. While if it is urged that the instance quoted 
is inadequate because the relation "north of" is a 
relation between purely physical objects, it can easily 
be shown that the contention advanced holds equally 
well of any other relations. For even if we take 
such a logical proposition as the Platonic "Goodness 
and Truth are one", where the terms are ideal enti- 
ties, eternal and immutable, and the relations be- 
tween them seemingly altogether independent of 
temporal or spacial implications, we still have a re- 
lational complex by reason of which changes occur. 
And this is so because the mere fact that there is 
such a proposition eventually entails a whole host 
of changes in any world in which goodness, truth, 
and change exist — produces, indeed, a quite specific 
reaction at this specific moment in my own organism. 



10 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

The same is true of mathematical entities and re- 
lational complexes, as well as of the eternal heaven 
of transcendental verities generally. Whatever their 
philosophic status may be, in so far as they are at 
all they are activities. For discoverable relations 
and entities of every kind — not only physical and 
mental, but ideal as well, — are all things by reason 
of whose being some modification in the world of 
process is continually occurring, if in no other way, 
at least in the conscious processes of which they are 
at any time the content. The universe, therefore, 
in this broader sense is dynamic through and 
through. Part of it, and possibly no inconsiderable 
part, may be extra-temporal and in that way static, 
other parts may well be extra-spacial, many portions 
are undoubtedly extra-physical; yet all parts are 
efficient. Any of them by their inclusion in some 
particular "state of affairs'- may be the ground for 
the modification of specific conditions. Nothing 1 is 
dead. Nothing is inactive. 

Although every conceivable thing is thus an ac- 
tivity, it is obvious however that, since the world 
is many as well as one, there must be many different 
sorts or conditions or manifestations of this activity. 
Our problem is therefore, (i) What kinds of ac- 
tivity are there? (2) How are these different kinds 
of activities related? And (3) what is the differ- 
entiating principle (or principles) according to 
which they can be distinguished ? 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 11 

Now since, according to our view, things are fun- 
damentally efficiencies and the world thus capable of 
interpretation in the terms of a universal behavior- 
ism, to specify every kind of activity would be sim- 
ply to catalogue everything of which we could think. 
At this point, nevertheless, it may be well briefly to 
point out in a general way the particular sorts of 
activity of which the more important elements of 
our world consist. 

We have already indicated broadly how entities 
both "real" and "ideal" as well as relations, whether 
taken as mere conceptions or objective realities, and 
of course processes, may be considered as activities. 
From this contention it follows that the entities and 
processes of the physical world must be activities 
also, since it is evident that, as direct objects of 
observation, they are continually the conditions of 
modification in any situation in which they are 
involved. And it is a familiar fact that science has 
already to a large extent reached the same conclu- 
sion. Physical motion is of course activity, since it 
is a specific form of change and directly the physical 
cause of other material motions. Physical entities 
likewise, aside from the obvious fact that, from their 
very nature as such, they must constitute grounds 
for change in other physical entities, are now gen- 
erally considered to be fundamentally electrical in 
character, and if so, ultimately a form of process or 



12 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

change. The chemical elements are no longer looked 
upon as static but as in a continual state of evolu- 
tion and disintegration. The atoms of which the 
elements are supposed to be constructed are also no 
longer considered ultimates, but are in their turn 
held to be composed of electrons, or particles of elec- 
tricity; while, finally, the electron itself is supposed 
to be some sort of vortex, whorl, knot, stress, or 
strain in an all-pervading ether ; or, should there be 
no ether, an electrical unit, possibly complex, and 
probably subject to expansion, contraction and 
change. So even matter itself is supposed to be 
in a continual process of evolution and dissolution, 
and, ipso facto, all the specific material entities of 
which "matter" is the general designation. 

The world however is full of a number of other 
things. Most closely associated with the physical 
world, perhaps, is the world of the mathematician, 
since it is more and more by the principles of that 
world especially that the physical scientist is enabled 
to find his way about among the bewildering multi- 
plicity of phenomena. Whatever the real status of 
the subject matter with which the mathematician 
deals however, (and the mathematician himself 
certainly considers it "objective" and intractable 
enough) whether its content — number, form, varia- 
bles, and the like — be as "real" as the pyramids, 
or merely useful conceptual ideals, they are, never- 
theless, activities. 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 13 

That, for example, there is such a thing as the 
numerical series at all, or that two and two equals 
four rather than five or seven, constitutes a reason 
for an innumerable host of specific processes, not 
only purely mathematical but material and mental 
as well. The undeniable fact, whatever its nature, 
that two and two make four is the direct reason for 
certain counting processes, (involving, of course, 
relational complexes,) besides "making a difference" 
— i. e. constituting a change — in countless other 
processes which would take place in some quite other 
fashion if this mathematical fact were anything else 
than what it is. In an assemblage where the presence 
of four units of any kind — ideal, mental, or physical 
— is an essential prerequisite for a particular condi- 
tion, the fact that this assemblage may be obtained 
by gathering together two couples of these units is a 
determining factor in the assembling process. And 
it follows that the same condition must obtain for 
the more complex mathematical situations, as well as 
for the more inclusive propositions of logic gen- 
erally. That "two things which equal a third thing 
in all respects are equal to each other" is a logical 
proposition which makes all sorts of differences to 
all sorts of processes, inaugurates many kinds of 
change; and this is so entirely irrespective of 
whether such a proposition is an objective fact, in- 
dependent of the logician who formulated it, an 



14 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

eternal verity shining forth in a transcendent heaven 
of universals, a law of thought, or merely a con- 
venient method created by the human animal for 
making his world more easily intelligible. For let 
such a proposition masquerade in any guise it will, 
it nevertheless is an activity. It is a fact by reason 
of which modifications take place in the reasoning 
processes, if indeed it does not also "generate" addi- 
tional logical propositions by implication. 

It seems sufficiently clear from these instances 
that logical propositions in general must fall into the 
same category, for propositions are not only facts 
of some kind, but, as essentially facts of such a kind 
that by reason of them changes take place, they 
must, in order to be at all, be activities. 

Naturally, it is but a step from mathematical 
entities and logical propositions to universals in 
general. And here again we meet with the same 
conditions. Universals, as we know, are general 
or "abstract" ideas, such as goodness, beauty, white- 
ness, and the like. Whether such "concepts" may 
be truly considered to possess some sort of being 
distinct from; the particular facts whose classes they 
epitomize, as Plato held, is a question which need 
not be discussed here. It may fairly be said, how- 
ever, that the words which designate them represent 
facts of some kind. For a universal is either a 
symbol for a certain group or class of particulars, 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 15 

a hypostatization of that symbol into an entity 
which has no real status aside from that fact of 
hypostatization, or, as the class itself, a genuine 
entity in its own right. Yet, under any of these 
circumstances a universal is an activity. 

As the name by which a group of particulars is 
designated, the mere fact that such a name can be 
given constitutes a ground for the naming process, 
while that such a name really exists creates a change 
in the reaction of all conscious organisms towards 
that group of which it is the designation — the sym- 
bol for the existence of the component parts as 
collectively a group at all. Specifically, for in- 
stance, can anyone seriously maintain that the 
possibility of the generic appelation "protozoa" or 
"vertebrate" does not do something — make a vital 
difference to the science of biology? On the con- 
trary without classification, which means naming 
the separate animal groups, these sciences would 
not be possible. Again, the hypostatization itself 
(a process, too, even if no more than just that) has 
been the raison d'etre of a whole series of philo- 
sophical processes — Platonism, New Realism, and 
the Scholastic discussions generally. Whereas if 
universals are, on the other hand, independently 
real, so much the more are they effective and 
dynamic entities, since without them the world of 
particulars could not exist at all. 



16 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

Universals, then also, are facts of some kind, and 
as facts, no matter of what kind, are, as such, 
activities. The ideal conceptions of mathematics 
and the physical sciences, as we have seen, are real 
activities, otherwise they would not exist even as 
ideals, continually modifying, as they do, scientific 
procedure in so* many ways. In like manner it is 
not difficult to show that the ideals of ethics or 
aesthetics, in so far as they possess any effective- 
ness, are activities also. Any conceivable good, 
because of the fact that it is so conceived, is a more 
or less important factor in the behavior of the in- 
dividual who conceives it. In so far as it is a factor 
its presence determines his conduct, alters the pro- 
cess of his reaction, is effective — in other words 
constitutes an activity. 

The same thing is true of aesthetic ideals. The 
painter strives for an ideal beauty of color com- 
position, the musician for an ideal perfection of 
melody, harmony, and counterpoint. The specific 
aesthetic ideal in either case is the dominant factor 
which governs the whole attitude — modifies the 
entire reaction of the artist who possesses it. In 
scholastic phraseology it is the "final," or "formal" 
cause — which in this case is none the less true 
because it smacks of Aristotle. Called by any name 
you please, however, such ideals are activities. 

Religious ideals also are, if anything, even more 
"active" activities, since they more deeply modify 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 17 

the course of the average individual's behavior. All 
of which may throw some light on the apparently 
paradoxical fact that Apollo or Nicholas Nickleby 
are in some ways more real characters — occupy a 
higher place in the scale of activities — than many a 
person whose lumbering footsteps press down the 
solid earth. 

Not only events in general then — anything that 
happens — but anything that makes a difference in 
the world of happenings, is, to that very extent to 
which it does make a difference, an activity. Values 
therefore, about which there has been so much 
recent discussion, will be conspicuously, and with 
rather notable clearness, activities. For "values" 
are those conditions in any situation which deter- 
mine the reactions of living organisms to that situa- 
tion. They are those elements in a "state of 
affairs" that control the conduct of the man or 
animal which that "state of affairs" confronts. 
The very essence of their being is to constitute the 
worth factor in anything to which they may per- 
tain; the value of anything being obviously the 
criterion of its effectiveness. The philosopher acts 
unwisely here when he overlooks the pithy truths 
of the common man. Anybody is worth "what he 
is good for," says the vernacular — his value lies 
in what he is able to do, in the changes for which 
he is the reason. That which constitutes the value 



18 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

of anything is its efficiency, its existential status has 
nothing to do with it. For a value is none the less 
an activity because it appears to be neither physical 
nor mental. On the contrary, values are among 
the most sharply defined instances of pure activity, 
since their entire being lies in their effectiveness — 
their esse is efficere. 

So much, then, for all sorts of things. Turn 
wherever we will, in so far as these are effective 
in any way at all as conditioning the course of 
events, they are activities. 

As yet, however, consciousness has not been re- 
ferred to directly. Perhaps, at this place, it is 
hardly necessary. Yet that such a fact, or the 
series of facts for which it is the generic term, 
exists can scarcely be controverted seriously. 1 For, 
evidently, it is either an entity, a process, a relation, 
or some combination of these. And since, as we 
have attempted to show, all entities, processes, and 

1 Neither James, the Behaviorists, nor the Mechanists ques- 
tion the existence of awareness data as empirical facts, 
whatever views they may advance as to the existence of con- 
sciousness as a valid conception over and above these empirical 
facts. Wm. James, 'Does Consciousness Exist'? pp. 1-37, 
Essays in Radical Empiricism; Longmans Green & Co., 
London, 1912. 

John B. Watson : Behavior. New York, 1914, and Psychol- 
ogy from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. Lippincott & Co., 
1919. 

Jacques Loeb: The Mechanistic Conception of Life. Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press, 1912. 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 19 

relations are activities, it follows, of course, that 
consciousness must be an activity also. That 
awareness exists at all (and who doubts it), un- 
questionably makes some difference to the world in 
which it belongs, and to that extent at least it is an 
activity. That it is an activity in a much wider 
sense most of us believe. But in so far as it is at all, 
in so far forth it is an activity. 

Well; the various kinds of activities have been 
sketched in a brief way, and the rough outlines of 
a world have been blocked out from the Activist's 
point of view. If all is activity, however, there 
must be some principle by which the various kinds 
or degrees of activity can be distinguished or this 
world would be all alike, which it obviously is not. 
The problem here, then, is in what does this differ- 
entiation consist? How does this "one" become 
many r 

Before even an attempt to answer this problem can 
be hazarded however, a preliminary question must 
be asked — namely, in what does the measure of 
activity consist? How can the differences between 
specific activities be determined; in what do such 
differences consist; and can any conception be dis- 
covered by which these differences can be intelligi- 
bly described? 

The problem is not easy, but we are inclined 
to believe that such a conception can be found; 



20 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

a conception which, for want of a better term, 
we shall call "intensity." The use of intensity in 
the sense proposed here is perhaps unfortunate, 
as the word has already acquired so many technical 
meanings; as, for example, in electricity, where it 
is applied only to the measurement of differences 
in electrical level, or voltage, in contradistinction to 
the "amount" of electricity; in psychology, where 
the word is usually applicable only to the varying 
degrees of a particular sensation or feeling. 
Accepting however as authoritative Royce's defini- 
tion of intensity as a method of determination 
wherever differences can be expressed only by 
means of "greater-less, and equality," this use of 
it appears legitimate; so that on the whole it would 
seem better to employ it in this somewhat special 
way rather than to invent some new, and possibly 
barbarous, equivalent. We shall use the word, 
therefore, but not quite in its ordinary meaning, 
much less in the restricted sense in which it is em- 
ployed in physics and psychology. As even its 
ordinary connotation, however, implies a degree of 
power from within, an intrinsic effectiveness; and 
as activity is essentially self-active, since according 
to our definition it is the ground for all process, the 
term seems not unfitting. 

But we propose to use it in a still broader 
way, as well as with a more specific significance. 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 21 

For our purposes, we shall consider intensity to 
include certain essential elements which we shall 
call, respectively, amount, range, and persistence. 

"Amount" signifies the intrinsic quantity of 
activity involved in any specie instance. "Range" 
means the extent to which that specific activity is 
efficient in regard to other activities. And "persist- 
ence" indicates the duration of a specific activity as 
such. 

To these a fourth, and derivative, characteristic 
may be added which we shall call exclusion — the 
extent to which an activity, by reason of its own 
intrinsic efficiency, remains impervious to the influ- 
ence of other activities; the extent to which any of 
its own efficiencies may be regarded as independently 
variable. 2 

To explain further — (i) Amount — the intrinsic 
quantity of activity — is almost self-evident, and 
scarcely needs additional definition here. 8 The 

'Stated in relational terms these elements represent: (i) 
The relations of a being to itself or to its own essential parts — 
its "inner" relations ; (2) its relation to whatever is not 
itself — "the outer world" spacially and otherwise; (3) its 
relations to the time series ; and (4) the relations to it of 
whatever is not itself. 

• Strictly speaking the "amount" of any activity is the 
quantity of units (however defined) of which it is composed. 
And "quantities", says Royce, "are objects, either physical or 
ideal, that fall into series by virtue of relations of the order 
of greater and less". 



22 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

world of physical energy abounds in sufficiently ob- 
vious examples of what is meant. A living material 
organism, for example, represents a greater intrinsic 
quantity of activity than, let us say, a wooden image 
of the same size and weight. It possesses much 
more of those forms of activity known as physical 
and chemical energy. 4 

Thus, for example again, although our wooden 
image is less intrinsically active than the living 
organism, it might well, if pushed off a high cliff, 
annihilate that living organism on the ground below. 
In this event however the activity which had brought 
about this unfortunate result would not have been 
the intrinsic activity of the wooden image but the 
intrinsic activity of gravitation, plus, of course, the 
relational activities of its situation on the edge of 
the cliff, the push, etc. Its own activity would have 

His definition of a series is "any row, array, rank, order of 
precedence, numerical or quantitative set of values." A series 
as defined by Huntington is "any class of distinct elements 
such that if an element A > (is greater than) B, and B > C, 
then A > C." 

For a full discussion of this subject see Royce's "The 
Principles of Logic" in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical 
Sciences, vol. I, p. in ff. ; and E. V. Huntington's "The 
Continuum", p. 10; also B. RusseJPs "Principles of Mathe- 
matics", vol. i, p. 199. 

4 By "intrinsic" here, is meant a qualification restricting the 
measure of activity to that quantity of activity which, in any 
given object (physical or otherwise), exists by virtue of that 
object being what it is. 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 23 

nothing to do with the result except the fact of its 
weight, and this, ex hypo the si, was no greater than 
that of the organism. 

To take another example — not from the physical 
w r orld — the ideal of goodness is more intrinsically 
active than such an ideal as gentleness. Because it 
is just what it is, it is a greater factor than gentle- 
ness in influencing human behavior. It is more 
dynamic. As a moral value it is larger. 

(2) A second element involved is range. Range 
means for us here the measure of how many, and 
how much, other activities can be affected — how 
many, and how great, are the changes of which any 
specific activity can be the ground. For example 
once more, the range of the living organism is 
clearly much wider than the range of its wooden 
replica. For, first of all, it can physically transport 
itself about the earth, and so come into contact with 
a larger variety of material environment. Whereas 
the wooden man must stay where it is put unless 
moved by some extrinsic physical force. The living 
organism, furthermore, even when stationary is in 
effective touch with many activities, internal and 
external, with which any inorganic substance is 
necessarily out of all immediate relation. It can act 
upon, and react to, innumerable stimuli to which 
anything merely wooden is essentially quite oblivi- 



24 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

ous. In fact the case is so plain that mere citation 
is sufficient. 

In another sphere the goodness ideal is an equally 
evident instance. For such an ideal as goodness in- 
fluences a thousand men, where the value of gentle- 
ness appeals to perhaps a dozen. The "range" of 
its effectiveness as an activity is many times as wide. 

Such an ideal entity as a cone is another instance, 
for a cone is applicable to a multiplicity of mathe- 
matical problems, affects innumerable calculations, 
its sections are followed by myriad heavenly bodies ; 
whereas such a solid as the dodecahedron is of 
interest only to Archimedes or the mineralogist. 
As a mathematical conception, a symbol, or a phys- 
ical fact, a cone is an important activity — constitutes 
the ground for many processes, psychic and phys- 
ical, while the dodecahedron is chiefly active as the 
principle of cleavage for sphalerite. As a standard 
of practical value whoever saw a dodecahedron out- 
side of a book on geometry, or perhaps in its ap- 
proximate form, the pyritohedron, among the 
crystals of a mineralogical museum? But even the 
planets in their mighty courses travel according to 
the sections of a cone. 

(3) The characteristic of persistence, taken by 
itself, needs, of course, no comment. Used in this 
connection, however, since it necessarily involves a 
temporal element the term would seem to call for 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 25 

some elucidation. Yet what is meant is really simple 
enough. What is meant is that, in taking account 
of the total value of any specific activity — the meas- 
ure of its entire effectiveness, we must include as 
a factor range of duration as well as spacial range 
and range of numerical quantity. "How much", 
"in relation to how many different things", "with 
how little interference", and "for how long", is a 
certain activity efficient? These are the questions 
the answers to which determine its intensity. For 
it is obvious that an activity which persists is, other 
things being equal, of more importance than an ac- 
tivity which is transient. It is efficient at more 
moments. Its temporal range is greater. A living 
tree, for example, has more persistence than a dead 
tree. From the very fact that it is a living organism 
it can repair injuries, adapt itself to varying condi- 
tions in its environment and so remain to stand and 
flourish when the dead trunk has lost its withered 
limbs and fallen rotting to the ground. 

Or again, such an ideal as that of truth has greater 
persistence than the conception of error, since it is in 
relation to a greater part of the time series than 
error. Broadly speaking, true judgments are more 
frequent than false judgments. 

And this is so whether we accept the pragmatic 
definition of truth, the realistic definition, or agree 
with Emerson that "truth is the conformity of 



26 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

thought with things". For it is evident that in 
general thought does conform with most things for 
most of the time. So that even if all ideals should 
turn out to be "eternal" — extra-temporal — they 
nevertheless vary enormously in the persistence with 
which they act as grounds for any specific changes. 
The same is true of mathematical ideals. For, al- 
though a dodecahedron may be as everlasting — as 
much "no when" — as a cone, its persistence is much 
less since there are long periods when its activity is 
practically non-existent or, to say the least, reduced 
to an almost negligible minimum of efficacy, whereas 
the cone is widely active all the time. 

(4) The characteristic of exclusion is, in a sense, 
the inversion of range. By exclusion is meant that 
capacity in any activity which from its intrinsic 
nature offsets or overcomes the effectiveness of 
other activities. For example, the living organism 
can offset by its motion the property of inertia which 
characterizes completely the wooden image. It 
overcomes by its metabolism the processes of decay 
which tend to disintegrate it. It excludes, by the 
capacity of its integrated nervous system for reac- 
tion to a wide range of stimuli, the unhindered and 
overwhelming activity of any single stimulus from 
driving it to disaster. And it is obviously this 
capacity for exclusion, even more than its merely 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 27 

greater physical energy, which differentiates it from 
its wooden effigy. 

By exclusion, however, it is not meant that the 
adverse activity is nullified or destroyed, for activity 
as such is indestructible. 5 What is meant is that any 
such adverse activity is directed to its own advan- 
tage, or otherwise overcome in such a way as to 
interfere as little as possible with its own intrinsic 
activity. 

For example the ideal of goodness normally 
offsets any adverse conceptions of evil with which 
it is by nature in conflict, unless these latter concep- 
tions are given an enhanced dynamic value by 
extrinsic reinforcement. It would, also-, usually 
exclude such a lesser and more qualified ideal as 
gentleness if that ideal, although somewhat similar, 
should find itself in conflict with its more powerful 
and comprehensive companion. "Fighting for the 
right", for example, although itself a "good" might 
altogether exclude all gentler virtues. 

Or again, although different geometric figures are 
as a rule mutually exclusive as ideal activities, even 

6 "Exclusion" is developed here as a distinct characteristic 
because, although the inversion of "range", it is just for that 
very reason, something different. Range is the number of B's 
to which A "makes a difference". Exclusion is the number 
of B's which, owing to A's being what it is, do not "make a 
difference" to A. The relations here are not reflexive. The 
point is important as will appear later in the discussion of 
awareness. 



28 ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 

in this case the analogy to some extent holds good. 
For empirically it is evident that all actual motions 
follow approximately curves of some sort, circles, 
ellipses, spirals, and the like, to the almost complete 
exclusion of such unusual and fantastic figures as 
dodecahedrons. As an efficient ground for most 
physical processes, therefore, conic sections possess 
a notable power of exclusion, as against any forms 
that are strangely or elaborately angular. 

We have now attempted to explain, seriatim, the 
characteristics of intensity — namely, quantity, range, 
and persistence, as well as the characteristic of ex- 
clusion; and have tried to show how intensity, as 
so defined, constitutes the measure of activity. Yet 
it is plain that these characteristics need not be of 
equal importance as between similar activities be- 
longing to any one class, since it is conceivable that 
any two or more specific activities might be either 
exactly alike or might differ as to only one, two, or 
three of these characteristics, or to any extent as to 
each of them. Thus two organisms might be abso- 
lutely twin, or they might differ only as to innate 
energy (quantity), physical strength, or capacity for 
varied reaction (range), or vital resistance (per- 
sistence) ; or any combination of these. In which- 
ever of these the difference between them principally 
lay, nevertheless, that difference would constitute in 
so far forth a difference of intensity and so a meas- 
ure of their relative activity. 



ACTIVITY AS AN UNDERLYING HYPOTHESIS 29 

It is evident, moreover, that the differences be- 
tween the two great classes of entities and relations, 
consist of such wide generalizations as to be of little 
specific interest at this point. Where the full sig- 
nificance of intensity as a differentiating conception 
comes in especially is in delimiting the great intrinsic 
levels, or planes, of activity into which the world 
appears to be divided. 



CHAPTER 3 

PLANTS OF ACTIVITY 

Th£ universe of which we seem to be aware, it 
was said at starting, falls into three great classes — 
entities, relations, and processes. This division 
however, although important as a general funda- 
mental proposition, is to some extent formal, for 
empirically we do not discover entities out of all 
relations with either each other or with at least one, 
and usually many, processes. The world as it ac- 
tually appears is an entity-relation-process affair. It 
is also*, as we have attempted to show, through and 
through a world of "activity". It appears to be, 
moreover, quite obviously a world of many different 
degrees of activity ; and we have tried to point out 
in what, essentially, these differences would seem to 
consist ; while the measure of those differences, or 
that by which they might best be determined, we 
have called "intensity", defining that term, in a 
somewhat special way, according to its three prin- 
cipal characteristics of amount, range, and persist- 
ence. 

Accepting provisionally these preliminary prin- 
ciples, and with the conception of intensity as a dif- 
ferentiating instrument, let us examine our data a 
little more closely. 

Let us begin by turning our attention to the 
material world — the world of physical science. 

(30) 



PLANES OF ACTIVITY 31 

Now one of the first things that strikes us here is 
that the apparent order of this world is far from 
democratic. On the contrary it is notably hierarchic. 
It is everywhere cut across into pretty sharply de- 
fined planes. The scale of ascending complexity, 
of increasing activity, is marked by salient differ- 
ences. It proceeds by jumps from electricity to gas, 
thence to mineral, vegetable, and animal; from 
electron to atom, thence to molecule, cell and 
neuron; from the simple reactions of the compara- 
tively homogeneous inorganic elements to the highly 
organized activities of the complex living organ- 
ism; from the mere sensitivity of the amoeba to the 
complicated selective reactions of the higher verte- 
brates. That these apparent differences are also real 
differences imbedded in "the nature of things" is in- 
dicated by the fact that Science finds itself obliged 
to employ additional sets of postulates whenever it 
wishes to pass from its conception of the entities and 
relational conditions which characterize any one 
plane to a conception of those which characterize a 
different plane. 

In the transition, for example, from mathematics 
to physics the additional postulates of mass and 
gravity (or some other relational "influence" be- 
tween physical entities) must be assumed. In pass- 
ing from physics to psychology the postulate of 
awareness (however defined) must be superadded. 



32 PLANES OF ACTIVITY 

Unless, then, these differences were essentially 
involved in the data with which science is concerned 
in interpreting, the necessity for such distinguishing 
postulates would not have arisen. 

In each new plane, also, where the entities are 
characterized by generally greater complexity, a 
fresh set of organizing relations comes into play. 
Cells, for instance, are not merely aggregates of 
atoms, but the component atoms involved must be 
organized in certain definite ways. Nor are atoms 
presumed to be mere congeries of electrons, but 
assemblages of electrons organized into certain 
specific patterns. The activity, again, of a living 
animal is different from the activity of an inert 
mass, if in no other way at least in its greater com- 
plexity and its inclusion of a greater number of 
organizing relations. And there is always a more 
or less well defined break wherever these new rela- 
tions of organization appear. 

When we reach beyond the domain of physical 
science, moreover, the great transections seem even 
more marked and separate. For whenever we pass 
from matter to electricity, from electricity to con- 
sciousness, or from consciousness to a possible plane 
of neutral entities such as universals, ideals, and 
relations, we seem to plunge at once into totally 
different worlds. 



PLANES OF ACTIVITY 33 

Yet these so different worlds are unquestionably 
facts of some kind no matter what their exact 
status may be, and we cannot be absolved from 
taking some account of them even by denying 
that they exist. For the world of matter is not 
analyzed out of existence by showing that its con- 
stituent atoms are configurations of electrons, nor 
the mental world by proving that its processes 
can be described as the selective reactions of an 
integrative nervous system. Matter is not just 
electricity, however its units may be compounded. 
Fresh organizing relations must be superadded. 
Nor is consciousness solely selective reaction, let 
that reaction be as discriminative as it may. Nor, 
for Activism at any rate, are universals and values 
merely mental. The worlds of matter, mind, and 
values may be mutually interrelated, but they are 
not the same. Nor can w r e legitimately hold that 
any one of them is more real on its own plane than 
any other one. For while, according to our conten- 
tion, all these worlds are activity in one form or 
another; and while it might also turn out that they 
were all "material", or "psychic", or possessed of 
some other characteristic in common; yet their 
differences would be none the less salient. 

For example : As regarded by modern physics all 
matter is ultimately electric in character. Its mass 
depends upon an electric charge, its atoms are com- 



34 PLANES OF ACTIVITY 

plexes of electric corpuscles. All electricity, how- 
ever, is not matter. It is, on the contrary, something 
less rigidly conditioned and something different. 

Yet in passing from the plane of electricity to the 
plane of matter we move into a world of activity 
possessing greater range. That specific form of 
electricity known as matter, because it is structurally 
more complex and involves a greater number of 
organizing relations, can do more different things, is 
efficient in more directions — possesses, generally, 
greater intensity. The same thing is true when we 
pass from so called "inorganic" matter to the plane 
of conscious organisms (whatever "conscious" may 
be held to mean). As we have shown before, the 
conscious organism can do more, the range and 
intensity of its activities is altogether greater than 
that of any "lifeless" complex. And this is none the 
less a fact because, apparently at any rate, we find 
"conscious" reactions associated only with certain 
specific material forms. This may well be a numer- 
ical correlation only. It does not necessarily imply 
that the conscious organism does not intrinsically 
belong to a world of more intense activity. 

For, even if consciousness could be shown to be 
nothing else than behavior, i. e., the specific reaction 
pf certain complex material organisms, it is evident 
that such behavior takes us at once into a wider and 
different realm than merely material activity. It in- 



PLANES OF ACTIVITY 35 

volves in the first place electric phenomena of a deli- 
cate and complex form not present apart from a 
nervous system. It involves further, at least in man, 
reaction to such extra-physical things as values, 
moral, aesthetic, or philosophic. It may also involve 
awareness of its own processes — self-consciousness, 
however we may interpret that much discussed term. 
In short, it involves many kinds of relational com- 
plexes which are quite beyond the "range" of mere 
mass and motion. Call aw r areness what you will, 
behavior, relation, dimension, or epiphenomenon 
(whatever that self-contradictory word may mean), 
it nevertheless makes a difference, implies an addi- 
tional factor, opens up a wider range of activity. 

Whether we can get along comfortably in psy- 
chology without the concept of "consciousness" is a 
fair question. Yet, answer it as w r e may, we 
shall still continue to have sensations, feelings, and 
thoughts, however technically defined. Nor can any 
amount of definition blot out the essential difference 
between that which is aware, the objects of which 
it is aw r are, and the means by w T hich it is aware of 
them. 

Since, then, awareness not only involves proc- 
ess, but a process of such specific characteristics as 
definitely to differentiate its activities from those of 
other planes, we shall speak fearlessly of a plane of 
awareness — a psychic plane — within whose limits 



36 PLANES OF ACTIVITY 

psychic processes occur, and leave to the psycholo- 
gists, for the moment at least, all further contro- 
versy as to its proper status. We shall assume 
also, with the realist and the common man, that 
there are objective and "material" actualities which 
act and interact upon a physical plane independently 
of any knowing process on our part, as well as extra- 
physical and "meta-psychic" realities — relations, 
ideals, values — which constitute in their turn activi- 
ties upon a plane of their own. 

Just then as the world can be divided, as it were, 
perpendicularly, into three great classes of being — 
entities, relations, and processes, so it can be divided, 
transversely, into three main planes — the physical, 
the psychic, and the meta-psychic. 

Each of these principal planes is distinguished by 
characteristic organizing relations, the absence of 
which from the other planes constitutes a set of 
differentiating conditions. 

Each of these planes also, as we shall attempt to 
show in the next chapter, possesses, in addition to 
its distinguishing set of organizing relations, its own 
fundamental structural units which differ essentially 
from the characteristic units of the other planes. 1 

1 Most of the eastern philosophies have called attention, in 
one form or another, to this division into planes. The usual 
broad transection for the Indian thinkers is into the physical 
world (mahabhuta), mind (manas), and spirit (atman) ; 



PLANES OF ACTIVITY 37 

sometimes they are called akaga (ether), purusha (soul), and 
brahman (spirit). 

The Upanishads. Translated by Max Miiller. Oxford: 

The Clarendon Press, 1879. 
Sir M. M. Williams : Indian Wisdom. London : Luzac & 

Co., 1893. 
Paul Deussen : The System of the Vedanta. Translated by 
Charles Johnston. Chicago : Open Court Pub. Co., 1912. 
Sri Ananda Acharya: Brahmadarsnam. MacMillan, N. Y. 

1917. 
Buddhism is so strictly ethical that it has but little interest 
in cosmology. The world for it, also, is nothing but pure 
process and essentially unreal. Pragmatically, however, it too 
accepts analogous divisions. Conformations — the objective 
world (sankhara) ; sentient existence (vinnana) ; and what- 
ever lies beneath it all, usually expressed in a typically Bud- 
dhistic negative and illogical fashion as, at one end, ignorance 
(avidya), and at the other end, the goal of real attainment, 
"Nirvana". 

The Jataka. Translated by E. B. Cowell, Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, 1907. 
Herman Oldenberg : Buddha. Translated by William Hoey. 

London : Williams & Norgate, 1882. 
Henry Clarke Warren : Buddhism in Translations. Har- 
vard University Press, 1896. 
How much Plato may have been influenced by eastern 
thought it is difficult to determine. Yet it now appears to be 
pretty well established that the intercourse between Greece 
and the Orient was much closer than was formerly supposed, 
so that it seems unlikely that Athenian scholars should have 
been totally ignorant of Indian philosophy. 



CHAPTER 4 

UNITS OF ACTIVITY 

In the last chapter we distinguished, briefly, the 
principal planes into which the three main groups of 
activities which seem to constitute our universe ap- 
pear naturally to fall. 

Hereafter we shall refer to these planes as re- 
spectively "lower" and "higher," proceeding "up- 
wards" from the physical, towards the meta-psychic 
plane. 

This figure of speech, however, is not merely ar- 
bitrary; but since it appears to reverse the conven- 
tion which usually designates simpler and more 
fundamental phenomena as "lower," and more com- 
plex derivative phenomena as "higher," some ex- 
planation is perhaps necessary here in order to avoid 
confusion. 

Such a sub-plane as that of matter, for example, 
is considered "lower" than the sub-plane of elec- 
tricity because, although the fundamental unit en- 
tities (atoms) of the material world are complexes 
of the unit entities (electrons) of the world of 
electricity, and so "higher" in the scale of progres- 
sive complexity, the activity of the electric world in 
general is far greater in intensity, as to amount, 
range, and persistence — than the activity of the 
world of matter. 

(38) 



UNITS OF ACTIVITY 39 

When the still "higher" planes are reached, as 
we shall observe, this condition is even more ap- 
parent; the activities of the psychic and meta- 
psychic planes, although more basic structurally, be- 
ing of greater intensity in almost every way than 
the activities of the plane "below." 

Now each of the three principal planes — the phys- 
ical, psychic, and meta-psychic — proceeding in this 
way from lower to higher — we found to be char- 
acterized by a distinct order of data, as well as by 
a different set of organizing relations. 

We found, also, that these transections were not 
merely schematic but appeared to represent a real 
distinction between the phenomena of each plane, so 
that it was necessary, in the progressive considera- 
tion of the content of any two planes, for science to 
make use of certain new postulates without which it 
could not pass from one to the other. 

The same general conditions likewise seemed true 
in regard to the minor divisions, or sub-planes, into 
which the main planes could be separated, although 
here the limits were less sharply defined. In the 
physical plane, however, there appeared to exist 
fairly evident lines of demarcation between the 
classes of phenomena known as electrical, chemical, 
and organic, both in regard to their respective 
structural units — electrons, atoms, and cells, and in 
regard to the various sets of organizing relations 



40 UNITS OF ACTIVITY 

characteristic of each class. We did, not, however, 
attempt to indicate just how intensity, as we have 
defined it, was to be applied here as an adequate 
standard, or measure, of differentiation between 
these groups or planes. This question, however, 
was purposely reserved, because it involves a fur- 
ther consideration of some importance, namely the 
problem of the units of activity. 

Now this problem obviously opens up at once the 
whole question as to how far a quantitative repre- 
sentation of the contents of our universe will prove 
adequate — how deep the quantitative analysis will 
cut. Yet here we must again confess ourselves to 
be committed to the empirical method, and here once 
more we shall ask what is that "state of affairs" 
which we actually seem to find. 

In the first place, throughout the physical world, 
some sort of atomism is the universal formula. 
And, without doubt, empirical findings have bril- 
liantly substantiated the atomistic hypothesis. The 
living organism is composed of cells, the cell of 
molecules, the molecule of atoms, and the atom of 
electrons. Cells and molecules are visible through 
the microscope or ultra-microscope; the result of an 
impact flash from a single atom — the a particle in 
radium emanations — can be seen in the spinthari- 
scope; and the electrons, although as yet invisible, 
can be indirectly measured and counted. 



UNITS OF ACTIVITY 41 

But although the contents of each plane can be 
ultimately reduced to the units which compose it, 
any further reduction of the units of any one plane 
can only be obtained by resolving them into the basic 
units of the plane next above. A molecule can 
only be resolved into its constituent chemical atoms, 
or an atom into its constituent electrons. So we 
jump here, at a bound, from the plane of molecules 
and molecular motion to the plane of atoms and 
chemical activity; and then, at another leap, from 
the plane of matter altogether into the plane of elec- 
trons and electrical activity. 

Yet it is only under certain specific and limiting 
conditions that the units of the higher plane become 
combined into units of the plane below. The world 
is full of electrons which are not grouped into atoms 
(as an electrical charge) ; and of atoms not com- 
bined into living protoplasm; or probably even (as 
in the photosphere of the sun) into molecules of 
any kind. 

The significant fact should be noted here, how- 
ever, that it is only by this combination of higher 
plane units under the specific limiting conditions of 
the plane below that the units of the higher plane 
can manifest the particular sort of activities which 
essentially characterizes that lower plane. Thus 
electrons, or mere groups of electrons, do not mani- 
fest chemical activity. In order to do so they must 



42 UNITS OF ACTIVITY 

first be combined in a certain specific manner into 
atoms. To form living cells the atoms must be 
first organized into that specific colloidal solution 
known as protoplasm. And particularly must it be 
observed that the unitary complexes which can be 
formed with cells are quite impossible to form out 
of atoms not already in cellular formation, or the 
unitary complexes of atoms equally impossible to 
form out of electrons not first in atomic configura- 
tion. 

This brings us to a further point, which is that 
the several elements of intensity may to some extent 
vary independently, and particularly the element of 
range. 

For it is clear that any two- specific activities, such 
as physical or ideal objects, may differ from each 
other in amount, — i. e., a greater or lesser number of 
component units — without differing in duration, 
since they may both persist for the same length of 
time. Or two such activities may differ in range 
without differing in either amount or persistence. 
Thus, for example, as physical objects a man and a 
wild animal might be equal in amount, might contain 
the same number of physical units — atoms, or elec- 
trons, but the range of the man, as an activity, would 
be much greater ; there would be many more physical 
things to which he would "make a difference". 
Usually, also, his persistence would be greater as 



UNITS OF ACTIVITY 43 

well. For men generally live longer than most wild 
animals. 

It follows therefore that, although the total ac- 
tivity on any plane below is less, the range of any 
specific activity on the lower plane may be neverthe- 
less greater. And it further results, paradoxically 
enough it would seem, that the unitary complexes 
(i. e., complexes which act on their own plane as 
units) of the lower plane may, and often do, mani- 
fest a more intense activity than is possible for 
most at any rate of the unitary complexes upon the 
plane above. Certain chemical compounds, hydro- 
gen gas for example, have a greater range of ac- 
tivity in every way — even electrically — than the 
same number of electrons grouped in other ways 
upon the plane of electricity alone. An organism 
composed of living cells possesses more intensity — 
a far greater range of possible reaction — than any 
inorganic chemical compound. A Leyden jar has 
more intensity than a free charge composed of an 
equivalent amount of electrons. An animal has 
more intensity than a wooden replica of it com- 
posed of an equivalent amount of atoms. 

On the physical plane, then, both the fact of 
atomic structure and the fact that the units of the 
higher planes combine into units of the planes below 
are evident. While it is also to be observed that 
the unitary complexes upon the lower planes are 



44 UNITS OF ACTIVITY 

capable of a more complex organization and possess 
greater intensity than is usually possible for any 
similar unitary complex upon the plane above. 

When we come to the other planes, however, 
similar conditions are not generally held to obtain. 
Psychic atomism is in bad repute and maintained 
by few philosophers. We propose, nevertheless, to 
try this hypothesis even in these unusual regions, 
and to examine seriously how far it will work. 

Let us assume then that just as, in the physical 
world, objects are ultimately composed of atoms 
which in their turn are composed of electrons, so 
electrons in their turn could ultimately be analyzed 
into complexes of still more fundamental units. 1 

1 The atom is now considered by science as an established 
fact; and the objective status of the electron is nearly as 
good. 

Sir William Ramsay: Elements and Electrons. Harpers, 
New York, 1912. 

Sir Oliver Lodge : Electrons. George Bell & Sons, London, 

1917. 
Frederick Soddy: The Interpretation of Radium. Put- 
nam's, New York, 1909. 
L. Silberstein: The Theory of Relativity. Macmillan & 

Co., London, 1914. 
There is moreover already some evidence which indicates 
that the electron may not be so simple as at first supposed. 
Should it prove to be capable of contraction or change of 
shape; or, as some recent theories hold, to be a concentric 
field of force diminishing from center to circumference, it 
would be complex, at least to the extent of these variations. 



UNITS OF ACTIVITY 45 

Let us assume also that these hypothetical units of 
which the electron is made up are units of a higher 
plane, whose characteristic activity stands in a rela- 
tion to electricity analogous to that in which elec- 
tricity stands to matter. And finally, since we are 
already familiar with one form at any rate of this 
higher activity in the psychic processes, let us call 
these units "psychons". 2 

We need not raise the question at this point as to 
what awareness "really is". We shall merely con- 
tent ourselves with baldly stating our doctrine of 
psychic atomism. 3 

Awareness, at any rate for us, is an activity — a 
"that by reason of which change occurs", in this 
case, of course, change of awareness at the least, 
and, like any of the other activities which we have 
examined so far, composed of units — the psychons — 
whose combinations and unitary complexes make up 

2 The term "psychone" was proposed by Forel for the 
psychic aspect of a hypothetical unit of the nerve process, 
but as far as I am aware it has never come into general use. 

August Forel: Hypnotism. Putnam's New York, 1907. 

3 The student of the history of philosophy will undoubtedly 
be reminded here of Herbart's atomistic theories. The hy- 
pothesis proposed, however, differs in many respects from 
the Herbartian point of view. 

Herbart's monads (Reale) are essentially different from 
each other. They are simples, independently existent, their 
only positive attribute being self-preservation (Selbsterhal- 
tung). They are also supposed to be impenetrable, al- 



46 UNITS OF ACTIVITY 

the various characteristic activities of the psychic 
plane, as well as become combined into that special 
sort of unitary complex which forms the units of 
the plane next below. And since the next lower 
plane, in this case, is the plane of electricity the unit 
which is directly composed of psychons is the elec- 
tron. The collective activity of psychons, also, 
which we shall call "psychokinesis" differs, with its 
various combinations upon its own plane, in inten- 
sity; these various combinations of psychons ex- 
hibiting as groups respective degrees of amount, 
range, or persistence ; in general, amount and range 
depending upon the number of psychons in a group, 
and persistence upon the character of the organizing 
relations involved. 

though they exist in an "intelligible" space in which any num- 
ber of them may occupy the same point at the same time. 
Out of these monads Herbart builds up his world of experi- 
ence including both physical and psychic phenomena. His 
monads, therefore, are strictly neither psychic nor physical; 
although, as spacially conditioned, they resemble somewhat 
the "force-points" of modern physical theories. 

Unlike the Herbartian monads, however, which are inde- 
pendently different entities, the psychons are considered to be 
all alike since they are awareness units, nor are they essen- 
tially conditioned spacially. They are awareness units, and 
nothing else. 



CHAPTER 5 
Unitary Complexes 

A unitary complex is a complex of units which 
behaves as itself a unit. It is a complex of such a 
kind that it behaves as a whole, in a way in which 
no mere congeries of units could behave. The 
measure of its activity, therefore, is different and 
larger than the measure of the activity of any com- 
plex which does not act in this unitary fashion, u e., 
other things being equal its intensity is always 
greater. The intensity of such a complex moreover 
depends not only upon the amount of unit activities 
involved, but also, and principally, upon the degree 
of complexity (range) with which these units are 
organized. It obviously depends as well upon the 
degree of closeness (exclusion) with which the 
component parts are knit together. It depends, that 
is, directly upon the character and extent of the 
organizing relations involved. 1 

It is obvious that the intensity of an organism is 
greater than the intensity of any mere numerically 

*The further question naturally suggests itself here — just 
what organizing relations must be brought into play, in the 
case of any particular complex, in order that that complex 
should be a unitary complex — i. e., behave as an individual? 
This question in our present state of knowledge, can only be 
answered empirically. We have discovered many of the 
relations involved in molecular structure, as, for example, the 

(47) 



48 UNITARY COMPLEXES 

equal congeries of cells, that a cell has more inten- 
sity than an unorganized group of atoms, or an atom 
more than a group of free electrons. Yet it will be 
observed that there exist many varieties of organiza- 
tion of the units of each plane respectively, many 
complexes of less unification and intensity than the 
special organization which is essential in order to 
form a basic unit of the next plane below. There 
are, for example, unitary complexes of electrons, 
such as those which form unit charges, which do 
not form atoms; complexes of atoms, as the a 
radium emanations, which do not form molecules; 
and, of course, very many more of such complexes 
which are not grouped into living cells. These 
various complexes differ widely in extent of organi- 
zation and intensity, and it is only certain specific 
complexes of great closeness of organization and 
high relative intensity upon any plane that are car- 
ried over as units of the next plane below. 

As we mount from plane to plane, also, the units 
of the higher, more fundamental, planes are found to 
be more and more alike. Cells are of many different 
sorts, atoms of eighty or so varieties according to 

two-to-one relation and the relation of propinquity of H and 
O in a molecule of water. We have not yet discovered the 
number and configuration of electrons in most of the atoms. 
All that we can say, therefore, as a general proposition, is that 
there must be certain definite organizing relations as essential 
elements in every unitary complex, whether we have dis- 
covered them or not. 



UNITARY COMPLEXES 49 

the number of chemical elements, but electrons are 
supposed to be at most of two kinds, negative and 
positive, and quite probably of only one kind — the 
negative electron. The specific character of any 
unitary complex, therefore, as well as its existence 
as such a complex, depends directly upon the specific 
character of its component units derived from the 
next plane, and so on, ultimately, through all the 
other higher planes in succession. A cell, for in- 
stance, is a particular grouping of molecules, those 
molecules a particular combination of chemical 
atoms, and the different component atoms special 
configurations of certain numbers of electrons. 

So the whole of the physical world is character- 
ized by an ascending degree of organization by 
means of unitary complexes, those complexes occur- 
ring progressively in descending from the higher 
planes to the planes below. 

Paradoxically enough, therefore, in a process 
curiously reminiscent of the ancient doctrine of the 
"descent of the spirit into matter'', it would seem 
that it is only by organization upon the lower 
planes — greater specialization, or limitation — that 
the activities of the higher planes can achieve their 
enhanced degree of range and intensity. 

It follows conversely that the process of disinte- 
gration, whenever it occurs, is always a breaking 
down of a unitary complex into the component units 
of the plane above. An organism, when it ceases to 



50 UNITARY COMPLEXES 

be an organism, becomes a mere quantity of mole- 
cules and atoms; a molecule breaks up into atoms; 
while at least a partial disintegration of the atom 
itself, as we know, is observable in the case of 
radium, two of whose three disintegration products 
— the P and r rays — are considered to be electric in 
character, the ^ rays presumably streams of elec- 
trons themselves. 

The fundamental conditions, therefore, for the 
formation of a unitary complex are found always 
upon the planes above the one upon which the com- 
plex itself exists, A complex of atoms is what it is 
because of the particular natures of the atoms which 
compose it ; and these particular atomic natures are 
what they are because of the nature of electricity 
which permits its units — the electrons — to be held 
together in certain stable configurations, these stable 
configurations being dependent in their turn upon 
the organizing relations involved. What electricity 
does make the atoms what they are. In other words 
the structure of a unitary complex upon any one 
plane depends directly upon the functioning of the 
units of the plane above — this functioning, in its 
turn, depending upon the essential activity of the 
units of the next higher plane, and so on; the 
organization on all the planes depending, ultimately, 
upon specific activities — namely, relations — of the 
meta-psychic plane; the activity of any plane thus 



UNITARY COMPLEXES 51 

standing in, as it were, a "force" relation to the 
activity of the plane below. 

Now we have spoken, thus far, only of the unitary 
complexes of the physical world so called. The 
same general principles, nevertheless, hold good for 
the higher planes. Whatever our view as to the 
actual nature of consciousness, there can be no doubt 
that psychic complexes exist, and that as a matter of 
fact these complexes are more or less unified — func- 
tion as unitary activities. The normal psychic pro- 
cesses of any living organism are integrative. The 
organism not only functions as a unit, but appears 
to itself so to function. And the more complex the 
organic structure, in this case at any rate, the more 
unified is the function, the greater the coordination, 
the wider the range of stimuli to which the organism 
can respond as a unit. Moreover, just as a material 
complex depends directly upon the nature of elec- 
tricity of whose units it is ultimately composed, so, 
according to our hypothesis, an electrical complex 
depends directly upon the nature of psychokinesis. 
In other words, it is upon the capacity of the psy- 
chons to be formed into certain unitary complexes 
that depends the existence of unitary complexes 
upon the planes below. 2 

*A fuller discussion of the nature of psychokinesis and its 
units will be found in Chapters 7 and 9. 

At this point it seemed less confusing to state merely the 
bare hypothesis of psychons and their complexes. 



52 UNITARY COMPLEXES 

A psychic complex therefore, no matter where 
found, nor how correlated or identified with the 
characteristic complexes of lower planes, is none the 
less fundamentally and intrinsically a complex of 
psychons and dependent, ultimately, not only upon 
the organizing relations necessarily involved, but 
also upon the fact that the entities so related are 
psychons — awareness units — and not something 
else. 

Just as, also, there are many material complexes 
which are not organisms, and complexes of electrons 
which are not atoms, so there may be complexes of 
psychons which are not electrons, but psychokinetic 
complexes only. For although, presumably, all 
matter is electricity and all electricity psychokinesis, 
all psychokinesis is not necessarily in the form of 
either electricity or matter. According to this point 
of view, therefore, there is no reason in the nature 
of things why awareness, or unitary complexes of 
it — psychic centers — could not exist apart from the 
activities of any lower plane. 

It is evident, however, that, although such 
psychokinetic centers might exist independently 
upon their own plane, they could not exist inde- 
pendently of the activities of the meta-psychic 
plane or planes, above. For even psychokinesis is 
only one form of activity, of which ex hypothesi 
there exist still wider and more inclusive manifesta- 



UNITARY COMPLEXES 53 

tions. And these still wider forms of activity are, 
of course, the entities and relations of the higher 
planes — ideal entities, relations as such, and com- 
plexes whose logical nature depends upon neither 
physical nor psychic activities. 

Here again, we find activities without which the 
activities and complexes of the lower planes could 
not exist at all. For in the first place it is evident 
that no complex of any kind upon any plane could 
exist without relations— since what "complex" 
means is an integration of relations. Nor could the 
various degrees of integration occur as we actually 
find them if the numerical series were not intrin- 
sically just what they are, since it is upon the number 
of entities and organizing relations involved that the 
extent of complexity depends; nor could any proc- 
esses at all occur were it not for the time series. 
And this is equally true whether these higher plane 
activities are Bergsonian fluidities, independent 
realities, or merely Kantian forms of thinking. 
Under any of these definitions they are activities, 
and, as such, fundamentally and logically prerequi- 
site to the less inclusive activities of the planes below. 
Here again, also, are unitary complexes existing in- 
dependently on their own plane, such as relational 
complexes and complexes of ideal entities. Mathe- 
matics, for instance, is full of them — to go no 
further. 



54 UNITARY COMPLEXES 

Every lower plane complex, then, is not only a 
complex of the units of its own plane, but a complex 
of complexes of the planes above seriatim. For 
example, an organism is a unitary complex of mole- 
cules, a complex of atomic complexes, of electronic 
complexes, and of psychokinetic complexes. But it 
is always a unitary complex of higher plane activi- 
ties as well as a unitary complex of the immediate 
unit activities of its own plane. In short it is a 
unitary complex of many kinds and many degrees 
of activity. Furthermore, since the growth of struc- 
ture is, as a process, usually reversible, when a uni- 
tary complex is broken down it disintegrates, succes- 
sively, into the unitary complexes of the higher 
planes in reverse order. Thus an organism upon 
dissolution breaks up into molecules and atoms. 
The atom upon dissolution into electrons, the elec- 
tron (upon our hypothesis) into psychons, and the 
psychon (ideally at any rate) into the entities — 
activity points, or what not — of the meta-psychic 
world. 

It follows, therefore, that a complex upon any 
one plane does not upon dissolution necessarily cease 
to remain a complex upon the plane above. A 
"dead" organism is still, for a time at least, a 
unitary complex of atoms. It may conceivably exist 
still longer as a complex of electrons, or a psycho- 
kinetic complex. 



UNITARY COMPLEXES 55 

Such a unitary complex as a physical organism, 
can be considered variously as a complex of 
cells, molecules, and atoms; an electro-magnetic 
complex; a psychokinetic complex; or a complex 
of force points in certain relations — all of which 
views are equally correct. But the point here is — 
from whichever angle of vision it is looked at, upon 
whichever plane the observer takes his stand — such 
a complex is always a unitary complex. An organ- 
ism merely as a cellular complex constitutes an 
interrelated whole capable of unitary functions dif- 
ferent and of wider scope — greater in almost every 
way — that the mere sum of its parts ; it can behave 
in a different way, as an individual, from the way 
in which it could behave as a mere collection of its 
component cells, were there not other than additive 
relations involved. It is, also, an atomic complex 
which functions as a unitary mass independent in 
many ways of its character as a "living" organism ; 
as well as an electric complex with characteristic 
currents and electro-magnetic fields of its own. It 
is, too, a psychokinetic unitary complex reacting to 
its environment as a psychic individual. And it is, 
finally, a meta-psychic complex — a complex of rela- 
tions without whose existence as facts the possi- 
bility of complicated organization could not exist 
at all. 



56 UNITARY COMPLEXES 

It is to be observed, further, that the intensity and 
unification of function increases directly with the 
increased complexity of organization — with com- 
plexity of structure. Thus an organism reacts as 
a unit in more ways than an electron. Unification 
of function varies inversely with simplicity of struc- 
ture. Certain social conditions illustrate this most 
clearly. An unorganized body of men is incapable 
of acting together — of unitary function. Organ- 
ize them into a well drilled regiment and they will 
act "as one man" — function as a unit. Their 
organization has become more complex, but their 
collective function more unified. Other things being 
equal, the higher the civilization — the more complex 
the organization of any nation or social group — the 
more completely can it act as a unit, the greater is 
its effectiveness. And the interesting fact to be 
noted here is that the unit itself in any such organ- 
ized complex achieves, as a unit, greater intensity 
than it could obtain outside of the organization. 
Whether it be electron or man, the range of its 
activity is heightened. For although there are cer- 
tain things that it cannot do, there are more things 
which it can do than if it were unconditioned in this 
way. 

In everyday phraseology, it gains power from its 
organized association, as we see from the common- 



UNITARY COMPLEXES 57 

place but pithy sayings : "When two or three are 
gathered together," or "In union there is strength." 
Entities on any one plane, therefore, are always 
unitary complexes of units of the plane or sub-plane 
next above. And this brings us at once to the 
problem of the relations of the activities of the 
different planes to each other. 



CHAPTER 6 

INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

We have said that the activity of any plane stands 
in an efficient relation to the activity of the plane 
next below. The phrase is perhaps ambiguous, yet 
the meaning can scarcely be mistaken. For while 
the function of a unitary complex on any plane 
depends directly upon the structure of that com- 
plex — the specific coordination and nature of the 
units of its own plane — the structure of the com- 
ponent units depends directly upon the efficiency of 
the units of the plane next above. The behavior of 
a material complex, for example, depends upon its 
atomic structure, but the structure of the atom 
depends upon the behavior of the electron. It is 
what electrons do* — namely, get themselves, some- 
how, grouped into certain relations as to quantity 
and position — that determines the specific natures of 
the atoms which they compose. Just what the num- 
bers and patterns of the electrons are in most cases 
we do not yet know, although there are some inter- 
esting theories upon the subject. That, in the atoms 
of many chemical elements, their numbers are in 
the thousands and their configurations very com- 
plicated seems probable. 1 

1 See R. K. Duncan, The New Knowledge, New York, 1908, 
Part 5, chap. 2, for a clear popular discussion of this subject, 
including an exposition of Sir J. J. Thomson's 'concentric ring 
theory/ 

(58) 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 59 

The point here is obvious, yet its full significance 
would seem to have been more or less overlooked. 
And indeed the whole question has been so befud- 
dled, that one is reminded of the old riddle of the 
chicken and the egg where, although as chicken or 
egg, there is an infinite regressus of alternating 
primacy, the problem is solved as soon as we be- 
come aware that both egg and chicken have been 
evolved from more primitive forms whose methods 
of propagation were not by fertilization and gesta- 
tion but by fissure. 

Structure then, is always, to a great extent, 
ultimately process, but the process which it ulti- 
mately is is always a process taking place within 
the characteristic activity of the plane next above 
the plane upon which the structure itself exists. 
Organic structure depends chiefly upon chemical 
process; chemical structure upon electric process. 
The structural achievement — the organizing pro- 
cess — always takes place from the higher plane. 
This fact is important because it points the way 
towards an understanding of the manner in which 
the activities of the various planes are interrelated. 

The matter is, perhaps, clear enough upon the 
physical planes where the general interrelation of 
organic structure and chemical process, or of atomic 
structure and electric process, although many de- 
tails are obdurate as yet, is at any rate in prin- 



60 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

ciple pretty well understood. For example, many, 
if not all, of the chemical elements of protoplasm 
as well as some of the quantitative relations in- 
volved are now known. The general principle also, 
if not the specific facts, of the numerical relations 
between electrons and some of the chemical atoms 
is known likewise. The relation, however, of elec- 
tricity to psychokinesis — the activity of psychons — 
needs to be examined by the hypothesis which has 
taken this latter activity for granted. 

Now up to* the present our examples have been 
drawn largely from the world of matter and energy 
as understood by physical science. And we have 
made our inferences from that world princi- 
pally because it is, in a certain sense, the one with 
which we are most familiar — the one whose phe- 
nomena and laws have been most thoroughly re- 
duced to some sort of comprehensible order. But 
in dealing with psychokinesis we step at once into 
a field of different and wider activity. We are 
no longer dealing only with the conditions of 
merely physical energy — with masses, motions, and 
directions. We are dealing, on the contrary, 
with a plane whose phenomena, although in many 
relations to the physical planes, must be described 
in different terms, and measured by other than 
merely physical standards. It will be also with not 
a little difficulty that we shall be able to guard 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 61 

against the unwarranted application of physical de- 
scription to this more unfamiliar region. It will 
be hard not to speak of psychokinesis after the anal- 
ogy of physical energy. Yet psychokinesis is not 
energy in the sense in which that term is employed 
by physical science; since, ex hypothesi, although 
energy is a specific form of psychokinesis, psychoki- 
nesis is not energy, but "that by reason of which" 
energy changes exist, which is obviously a different 
thing altogether. 

As an activity, of course, its measure is intensity. 
There may be more or less of it, and it can vary, 
specifically, in range, exclusion, and persistence. 
But the "more or less" is not a physical more or less, 
the range not only a material extension, the exclu- 
sion not confined to physical exclusion, nor the per- 
sistence a duration of physical entities. 

For although the amount, the "more or less" of 
psychokinesis evidently implies a greater or less 
quantity of psychons; yet, unless those psychons are 
organized into the special groupings known as elec- 
trons, their merely numerical variations need have 
no relation to physical energy. Nor, indeed, need 
their numerical variations have any relation to 
spacial position, since they may well be quantita- 
tively compenetrative, and therefore not numeri- 
cally dependent upon spacial extension in any way 
whatsoever. 



62 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

The range of psychokinesis again, in any special 
instance, may be a range applicable to other psy- 
chokinetic phenomena only, or even to meta-psychic 
beings, such as ideals or universals. It is not by 
any means limited to physical entities or processes. 
Thus a love for pure mathematics may be greater 
or less — vary quantitatively — or it may consist in an 
affection for a wider or narrower group of ideal 
facts and processes — vary, that is, in range — where 
neither the quantitative variation nor the multiplicity 
of facts involved depends directly upon the facts of 
the physical world, no matter how, otherwise, they 
may be in relation to them. 

Again, a psychic process may exclude other psy- 
chic processes ; and this, of course, is true no mat- 
ter what the correlation between psychic and nervous 
processes may really be. The martyr who, oblivious 
of his pain, chants hymns of joy while burning at 
the stake is not only a manifest example, but the 
fact that his attentive content is, in this instance, a 
religious ideal makes the case even stronger. 

And finally, like all processes, psychokinetic proc- 
esses vary in persistence. Attention is perhaps the 
most notable example, for here, together with exclu- 
sion, persistence is the principal measure of its 
intensity. 

According to our hypothesis, then, psychokinesis 
is an activity whose intensity may vary independ- 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 63 

ently of the activities of the lower planes. Change 
of awareness does not necessarily imply change of 
physical energy, although, as we ordinarily know 
them, the activities of the different planes are usu- 
ally found closely interrelated. Free electricity is 
not usually found divorced from matter, nor psychic 
processes apart from physical organisms. 

Our general problem therefore is, in what rela- 
tions does the activity of the plane above stand to 
the activity of the plane below, and vice versa? 
More specifically, in what relations does the higher 
plane activity stand to those particular complexes of 
its own units which form, as unitary complexes, the 
basal units of the adjacent lower planes? How, for 
example, does electricity "affect" an atom or an 
atomic complex? How does psychokinesis "affect" 
an electron or a complex of electrons? 

Now, as this brief essay does not pretend to be an 
epitome of modern physics, it cannot even ade- 
quately indicate the scope of the interrelations of 
matter and electricity. In general, however, it may 
be said that the relations of electricity to matter are 
interatomic. An atom is affected by an electric 
charge or an electromagnetic field, through a change 
in either the quantity, configuration, or the rate of 
revolution or vibration, of its constituent electrons. 
In the same way psychokinesis may be held to affect 
electrons (and, of course, collectively, electricity in 



64 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

general) not as electrons, but as unitary complexes 
of psychons. And this immediately raises the ques- 
tion, how do psychons affect each other ? 

Now to ask how anything "affects" anything else 
is simply to ask for a description of the possible rela- 
tions between the things in question, involving the 
mutual interrelation of these relations themselves. 
What, then, are the possible relations between psy- 
chons — between units of awareness ? 

Before discussing this question, however, it may 
perhaps be well to call attention, here for a moment, 
to the various types of relations, to some of which 
types any particular relations that may obtain be- 
tween the psychons must belong. 

"In brief", (the quotation is from Royce), "a 
relation is a character that an object possesses as a 
member of a collection." A relation may be dyadic 
— between two objects only; triadic — between three 
objects; or polyadic — between any number of ob- 
jects. 

Thus "father of" is a dyadic relation between two 
objects, father and son. "Indebtedness" — where A 
owes B for a certain sum, C, — is a triadic relation 
involving three objects, A, B, and C — debtor, 
creditor, and debt. If the debt, in this case, were in 
consideration for some further and more compli- 
cated transaction involving a number of additional 
relations, as for example, the value of real property, 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 65 

rents and taxes unpaid, and the like, the "indebted- 
ness" would be polyadic — it would relate to a number 
of different objects or terms. 

Relations further are either symmetrical or asym- 
metrical. Symmetrical relations are those relations 
which are identical with their own inverse, such as 
equality or difference, since one object cannot be 
equal to, or different from another object unless that 
other object is also equal to, or different from it. 
Asymmetrical relations, on the other hand, are rela- 
tions where this mutual condition does not obtain. 
A good example is the relation of precedence in the 
scale of greater and less between the series of 
cardinal numbers, where two is greater than one, 
three than two, and so on, but where the inverse is 
not true. 

Relations also may be transitive or intransitive. 
If there is a relation between A and B, and the same 
relation between B and C, of such a kind that, wher- 
ever one finds A's, B's, and Cs, this relation is 
always true, whatever the individual objects (A, B, 
and C) may be, then that relation is known as 
transitive. The greater or less relation between the 
members of any quantitative series, as the cardinal 
numbers or the generations of men or animals, are 
instances in point. A transitive relation may also 
be defined as such a relation (R), that if A R B 



66 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

and B R C, then it is always implied that A R C — 
i. e. y that BRC can be eliminated. 

Thus, for example, the relations between the 
cardinal numbers is asymmetrical because two is 
greater than one, three greater than two, and the 
like, but never the opposite. It is also transitive 
because "greater than" holds in the same way all 
along the line, between one and two, two and three, 
or between any two numbers in the series. 

The relation "ancestor of" is also an instance. 
For if A is ancestor of B, and B ancestor of C, then 
A is ancestor of C. 

Where the relations between a series of objects 
are transitive, therefore, they hold good as between 
any two objects of the series, and all intermediate 
objects may be eliminated. If, on the contrary, the 
relation between A and B, and B and C, is of such a 
kind that it holds good only when A, B, and C are 
certain specific objects, that relation is intransitive. 
The relation "father of" is an example. It clearly 
holds good only when A, B, and C are male animals 
of successive generations in the same family. Nor 
can B here be eliminated; for if A is father of B 
and B of C, it is not true that A is father of C. 2 

'The short exposition given above is epitomized from 
Royce's classic discussion in "The Principles of Logic", p. 96 ff. 
Royce there makes a further distinction between non-symmet- 
rical and asymmetrical relations — asymmetrical being denned 
as totally non-symmetrical. This further distinction however 
is not necessarily followed, and has been omitted here. 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 67 

There is, finally, still another distinction between 
relations which it is important for us to note here, 
for it obtains wherever there are several relations 
between any two or more objects (or terms) . Thus, 
in a series of numbers, or other objects, the relation 
of "separate from" is logically prior to a relation of 
"greater or less", or precedence, between the mem- 
bers of the series. Since unless objects were distinct 
from each in some way, one of them could not be 
greater or less than, or precede, any other object. 

Or, again, if a relation of greater and less did not 
obtain between certain objects, the relation of "in- 
clusion" (whole-part) could evidently not obtain 
between them either, since in order that one object 
should include another object the including object 
must, in some way, be greater than the object in- 
cluded. 

Now as regards the classification of relations most 
philosophers are in substantial agreement. As re- 
gards their nature, however, there is a very material 
difference of opinion. In general the theories about 
them are three. 

Some philosophers hold that a relation always 
affects or modifies the objects which it relates, or 
that the -fact of the relation being there makes the 
terms modify each other; so that if A is related to 
B, the existence between them of that relation makes 
a difference to both A and B in such a way that 



68 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

neither A nor B are the same as they would be if 
the relation between them were not present. Others 
maintain that there is an underlying reality which 
contains objects and relations in such a way as to 
condition both of them; while still others hold that 
in some cases a relation may modify the objects 
which it relates, but that in other cases these objects 
may be independent. There is also a fourth and 
more extreme view which holds that objects which 
are related are always independent ; are never modi- 
fied by any relation which may obtain between them. 

The problems involved in the various theories of 
relations are difficult, and it would carry us too far 
afield to enter the philosophical arena concerning 
them. Yet as some position must be taken in this 
matter for our purposes here, it would seem wiser to 
adopt, as on the whole most satisfactory, the view 
that objects are neither exclusively dependent nor 
independent of the relations which obtain between 
them, but that their dependence or independence is 
determined by the conditions involved in any par- 
ticular case. 3 

We shall hold, therefore, that while any two ob- 
jects might be related in many different ways with- 

3 The classic idealistic contention that this problem logically 
requires, for its solution, the postulate of an all-containing 
"Absolute", need not be considered here, since in regard to 
such questions a realistic position was assumed at the outset. 
(See Chap, i.) 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 69 

out the relations obtaining between them altering 
the status of the objects themselves, there are, never- 
theless, specific instances where the presence of 
certain relations may essentially alter the conditions 
which pertain to either one or both of the objects 
involved in the situation. 

For example, various relations of distance, or 
temporal precedence, might well obtain between two 
physical objects without these objects being modi- 
fied in any way. On the other hand a particular 
relation between time and distance might be directly 
responsible for a collision which would annihilate 
one of the objects, as such an object, altogether. 

In the case of awareness, especially also, it is 
difficult to see how any object can be aware of any 
other object which essentially involves a complex of 
describable entities and relations, without being 
aware of the relations involved as well as of the 
entities, nor how the relations perceived in this case 
cannot but be taken to constitute a determining 
factor in the character of the awareness of the per- 
ceiving object. 

Having now discussed briefly the nature and 
classification of relations in general, let us return to 
the hypothesis which we have been developing, and, - 
taking a simple case — that of two psychons A and 
B in isolation — let us examine the nature of the 
relations there involved. 



70 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

In the first place, there is between the psychons a 
relation of separateness. Numerically there are two 
psychons and not only one. This separateness, how- 
ever, need not imply spacial distinction. It means, 
merely, that the two psychons stand reciprocally 
towards each other in a relation of "otherness" — 
otherness being a symmetrical relation. 

Secondly, there is a relation of likeness. As 
awareness units the two psychons are precisely alike. 
This also is a symmetrical relation. 

And, thirdly, there is a relation (whatever it may 
be) by reason of which B is included as awareness 
content in A. This third relation, while it is ap- 
parently symmetrical here, since there are only two 
psychons involved in the situation, is really asym- 
metrical, for, were there more than two psychons, A 
might be aware of B, B of C, and so on, without B 
being aware of A or C, nor C of B or A. 

But the situation which we are examining con- 
tains not only these three relations but also two 
entities, namely the two psychons. Now, by defin- 
ition, a psychon is a minimum awareness. A 
psychon is also by definition the minimum entity 
which exists. It would appear to follow, therefore, 
that the only entity of which a single psychon could 
be aware would be a psychon. For were a single 
psychon' s awareness content any greater entity, or 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 71 

number of entities, the awareness involved would 
no longer be a least possible awareness. While, on 
the other hand, a psychon's content could be no less 
an entity than a psychon, since no less an entity 
exists, 4 We shall assume, therefore, that, in this 
case, the only content — the only "something" of 
which either psychon is aware — is a minimum 
"something other", namely the other psychon. 5 

Whether or not that assumption is well founded 
does not materially alter subsequent considerations. 
For whether the awareness content of the psychon 
is that psychon itself, another psychon as other, 
whether the differentiation does not exist, or 
whether the content is some fundamental relation or 
relational complex essentially involved in the situa- 

4 The possibility exists, to be sure, that the awareness con- 
tent of a single psychon might be that psychon itself. If this 
were true, however, it would land us at once in the ineffectual 
world of the solipsist, the individuals in which world — namely 
the psychons — could never escape from their own self-aware- 
ness. Logically there would appear to be no valid argument 
against such a view. Empirically, however, we do not seem 
to find any such sterile condition in our experience. More- 
over the realistic position which was assumed at the start 
(Chap, i) precludes, for us at any rate, the necessity of con- 
sidering solipsism any further. 

8 This assumption involves the logically prior assumption 
that psychon A may be aware of psychon B without being 



72 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

tion, does not alter the fact that, whatever the 
ultimate nature of the entity, content, or process, 
the combination of these elements constitute in this 
case a least possible awareness. And that the 
psychon should be specifically and uniformly an 
ultimate minimum awareness, whatever its elements, 
is all that is essentially requisite for our hypothetic 
psychokinetic unit. 

In this hypothetical case then, to have any 
psychokinesis at all there would have to be at least 
two psychons — which perhaps is only another way 
of saying that the minimum existence for an intelli- 
gible world is at least two terms and the relation 
between them. 

In the only world which we actually know, 
however, there are innumerable terms in all sorts 

also aware of any of the three relational elements included in 
the situation. It also involves the assumption that A can be 
aware of B without being also aware of itself as one of the 
terms between which an "otherness" relation obtains. The 
problems avoided by these assumptions are by no means free 
from pitfalls for the unwary. Theoretically, however, if not 
empirically as well, it seems entirely possible for an aware- 
ness content to consist of nothing more than a bare "that" of 
some kind, as, for example, a simple sensation, without any 
self awareness or any awareness of "otherness". Moreover, 
that it is possible to be aware of an object like oneself without 
any awareness of the "likeness", or to be aware without any 
awareness of the "awareness relation", is a familiar fact of 
experience. 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 73 

of relations. 6 And since the pyschon is a unit — 
a minimum awareness — in order that there should 
be more than this minimum in any particular in- 
stance there must be more psychons. Yet it is 
evident that a merely larger number of psychons, 
taken with only the simple relations obtaining be- 
tween any two of them, would not get us very far 
in the development of such a complex world as we 
actually find in our experience. For what we actu- 
ally find is not a mere string of psychons (or, for 
that matter, any other sorts of units), but, rather, 
an infinite variety of more or less highly organized 
complexes of them. 

And this at once raises the question as to how this 
organization comes about. Now that organization 
is a fact in the world as we seem to know it is 
indubitable. That any organization, also, neces- 
sarily involves the presence of those relations with- 
out which it could not exist seems equally clear. It 
would appear, therefore, that organization takes 

6 We are faced here with a phase of the insidious problem 
of an infinite regressus. The difficulty may be met for us, 
however, in several ways. The actual number of psychons 
may be considered to be infinite. The relations between them 
essential to awareness may be transitive so as to make a closed 
circle — A to B, B to A, and so, finally, back to A. Or aware- 
ness may, under certain conditions at any rate, be taken as 
reflexive so that A is aware of itself. Any, or possibly all, 
of these conditions might obtain. 



74 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

place either by reason of the inherent activity — the 
organizing capacity — of the organized entities them- 
selves, or by reason of some other activity, or 
activities. 

Nevertheless as, for the Activist, relations also 
are activities of a higher plane, it seems simplest 
to consider that these relations themselves are the 
efficient agents by means of whose characteristic 
activities the organizing processes occur. Granting 
it to be a fact, then, that there are such things as 
"organizing relations" by means of whose active 
presence the world of psychons is not a mere 
congeries of "connexities" but a world of pro- 
gressively elaborated unitary complexes, it is im- 
portant here to examine somewhat more in detail 
the relations involved between the psychons forming 
these complexes, as well as to describe the interrela- 
tions of these complexes as unitary activities. 

We have already seen what are the relations be- 
tween any two psychons, considered by themselves, 
and of what the awareness of each individual psy- 
chon consists — its amount and range. 

Let us now imagine a unitary complex of ten 
psychons. Within this complex the individual 
psychons would only be aware one of the other. As 
a complex, however, the awareness content of the 
ten psychons would be of a different character. For 
all that is necessary here in order that this should 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 75 

be so is that the component psychons should be in 
other than merely additive relations. And that they 
would be in a non-additive relation is clear, since 
that relation by reason of which they are organized 
into a unitary complex and not a mere unconnected 
collection is essentially, as an organizing relation, 
non-additive. Our ten-psychon complex then, as a 
non-additive aggregate organized into a unitary 
activity, would be a more intense awareness, possess 
greater range, although no greater amount, than the 
mere sum of its component awareness units. 

Its awareness content might, for example, be ten 
other psychons as individuals, or another complex 
of ten psychons, or two other unitary complexes of, 
let us say, seven and three psychons respectively. 
If, moreover, its content were the two unitary com- 
plexes, one of seven and the other of three psychons, 
its awareness of these two complexes as two sepa- 
rate entities would presumably carry with it not only 
an awareness of bare separateness, but an aware- 
ness of difference, due to the different intensities 
(amount) of the entities in question. 

The awareness content here, then, would include 
separateness and difference, two relations of which 
no single psychon or mere unorganized congeries of 
psychons could be aware. Thus as the number of 
psychons and organizing relations involved in the 
formation of unitary complexes increases, the in- 



76 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

tensities of the complexes are increased also, both 
in amount and range. Their possible content be- 
comes larger. The number of other entities and 
relations of which they may become aware becomes 
greater. 

Why, precisely, this comes about is a further 
problem. For that matter we do not know, as 
yet, why electrons are assembled in certain ways 
into atoms, nor why specific chemical atoms attract 
each other. Yet that we actually discover these 
complexes and their organizing relations is an em- 
pirical fact, and is perhaps all that can be said con- 
cerning the situation. 

The question to which all this has been prelimi- 
nary however is, how can any possible complex of 
psychons — of mere awareness — no matter in how 
complicated interrelations, or relations to other com- 
plexes, acquire that specific set of relations and 
those specific characteristics or qualities which char- 
acterize the physical world? How, in other words, 
can electricity and matter be intelligently described 
as a form of psychokinesis ? Why is the difference 
between those particular complexes of psychons 
which are electrons not only a numerical difference, 
but also a spacial separation ? 

Now it may be said that, as a possible conception, 
the mere statement of the fact that electrons are 
complexes of psychons is not so paradoxical as it 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 77 

first appears. In mathematics a line, which is exten- 
sion, is defined as composed of an infinite number of 
points which have no extension. The extended is 
defined as composed of non-extended units. There 
exists no logical objection, therefore, to the con- 
ception of a complex possessing extension whose 
component units are unextended. 

But how can the relational complex, or manifold, 
of extension come to supervene between certain psy- 
chokinetic complexes? Yet, here again, we are 
faced with only a special instance of the broader 
problem — namely, how do relations of any kind get 
themselves into existence? Or granted that they 
already exist, or "subsist," upon their own plane, 
how do they "get into action" so to speak upon the 
planes below? 

It may be seen at once that the problem is funda- 
mental, not only for Activism but for all philoso- 
phies. 7 That relations of many kinds do so seem 
to "descend" is obvious. It it were not so the 

7 In general the realistic position has been taken that rela- 
tions are "external" — exist or "subsist" as real entities, real 
activities, upon a plane of their own. Yet the difficulty here is 
no greater for Activism than for other systems, and its solu- 
tion does not determine, in any event, the validity of the 
theory of psychokinetic unit entities. The literature on the 
subject is, of course, voluminous. Possibly the best exposition 
of the realistic position is in Russell's "Problems of Philoso- 
phy" and E. G. Spaulding's "The New Rationalism", Henry 
Holt & Co., N. Y., 1918. 



78 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

activities and complexities of the lower planes 
would not exist at all. And, here again, we shall 
content ourselves for the moment in merely stating 
the fact. 

Granting the fact, the particular problem of psy- 
chons and electrons narrows itself to the question of 
how that particular relational manifold known as 
spacial extension comes to obtain between the spe- 
cific complexes of psychons known as electrons. 
And the answer is that it is just the "irruption" of 
that particular relation of extension into the psy- 
chokinetic world that gives the specific character — 
the "quality" of extension — to certain complexes of 
psychons, creates, as it were, electrons out of psy- 
chons. 

What special class of psychokinetic complexes, 
then, (since there well may be many classes) is that 
class between whose members this relational mani- 
fold of spacial extension obtains ? And what are the 
relations that must exist between the psychons which 
compose the members of such a class? 

In the first place the members of this class must 
be complexes organized according to those relations 
which constitute the spacial manifold. 8 In the sec- 

8 A psychokinetic complex is "in" space, when its organiza- 
tion includes those asymmetrical transitive relations which ob- 
tain between points, *. e. t when its component psychons are 
organized according to the type of a three-dimensional con- 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 79 

ond place there must exist, as we have seen to be 
true of all unitary complexes, a non-additive rela- 
tion—a relation such that the specific activity of 
these psychokinetic complexes shall be essentially 
something more than, and something different from, 
the mere sum of the activities of their constituent 
psychons. Assuming the hypothesis of psychons 
and their complexes which we have attempted to 
describe, however, there is no reason why we should 
not assume also the non-additive organizing rela- 
tions involved in the spacial manifold to be appli- 
cable to a certain class of these complexes. 

We shall define an electron, therefore, as a 
unitary complex of psychons where the organizing 
relations are those relations involved in the spacial 
manifold, but where the psychons themselves are 
unextended. And we are further justified in this as- 
sumption since, as an empirical fact, we actually find 
the relation of spacial separation to obtain between 
those specific complexes known as electrons. Why 
this is so, and what the exact nature of the psycho- 
kinetic order may be in those specific complexes, is 
another question. But all that is necessary to make 
these conditions logically possible is that the order 

tinuous series (see Huntington, "The Continuum" chap. VI.) • 
Or, less technically, a psychokinetic complex is spacially condi- 
tioned when its organizing relations include such relations as 
"above", "beyond", "at the side of", and the like. 



80 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

here shall be an order characterized by certain non- 
additive relations. And this leads us at once to the 
larger question of the psychokinetic order in gen- 
eral. 

The subject is abstruse, but certain suggestions, at 
least, are pertinent. In the first place it should be 
observed that the units of any plane may be "taken" 
in at least two ways, directly or in series. Thus, a 
number of points may be considered as merely so 
many points. They may determine lines, but do not 
as such compose lines. But taken non-additively a 
series of points forms a continuum — a line. 

For the psychokinetic plane, however, due to the 
characteristic nature of the activities which compose 
it, there are certain special points to be noted. In the 
first place, while the relations between psychons 
are, in general, asymmetrical and transitive, in cer- 
tain cases they may be symmetrical, as when psy- 
chons A and B are reciprocally aware of each other. 
Again, although other relational manifolds, as those 
of time and space, may supervene, these apply 
principally to other planes ; they are not essentially 
involved in the psychokinetic order. The relations 
between psychons, as we have seen, are not funda- 
mentally the relations involved in the spatial mani- 
fold. According to the general proposition, never- 
theless, that the activities of the higher planes are 
always basal or essentially efficient for the activi- 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 81 

ties of the planes below, but that the converse is not 
true, the spacial relations may "make a difference" 
to psychons, by organizing them into certain com- 
plexes, but not conversely, these relations being ideal 
beings of a higher plane. Also, the existence of 
psychokinetic entities, or the relations pertaining 
to them, may not, or may, make a difference to other 
entities. Intrinsically they do not, but under cer- 
tain conditions they do. Generally, neither the ex- 
istence of A nor its activities depend upon the aware- 
ness of B, but both of these facts may well depend 
upon this relation. 

Here again the intuition of the common man is 
reliable. Usually your existence and behavior is 
quite independent of my knowing you. But often 
not only your behavior, but your very life itself, 
may directly depend upon this knowledge — namely 
in those instances where my awareness of you is 
an essential element in some more inclusive rela- 
tional situation in which your existence or behavior 
is also involved. In this case, then, one awareness 
may be said to "cause" a change in another aware- 
ness. It does not necessarily do so. Awareness is 
not essentially constitutive. That it should be so 
depends upon other additional relations. 

A psychokinetic complex, therefore, may be the 
reason for change in another psychokinetic complex. 
An electron, for example, may be "affected" by some 



82 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

other complex not an electron. To enable this to 
come about it is only necessary that the requisite re- 
lational conditions should obtain. And that these 
conditions do obtain is empirically evident from the 
facts. The human organism, for instance, which 
is a complex of electrons, reacts to — is affected by — 
all sorts of extra-physical things — ideals, logical 
processes, relations as such (e. g. pastness, distance, 
and the like) ; and, if telepathy should prove demon- 
strably true, it might even react directly to other 
psychic processes than its own. Nor are these 
extra physical beings any the less efficient because 
they are not physical. And, of course, awareness is 
one of them. Hence (for want of a better word) 
to emphasize this "making a difference", — this effi- 
cient, dynamic quality — we have used the word 
"psychokinesis." 

Yet just as the great majority of complexes upon 
any plane are normally unaware of — are unaffected 
by — any but certain complexes of the plane above, 
so the great majority of complexes upon the phys- 
ical plane are unaffected by merely psycho-kinetic 
complexes. Material complexes, although funda- 
mentally composed of electrons, are under usual 
conditions only slightly affected by electro-magnetic 
disturbances. It is only when material complexes 
are delicately organized — in states of highly un- 
stable equilibrium — that they are sensitive to the 
"forces" of the plane above. In the same way 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 83 

electronic complexes are generally minimally af- 
fected only by the activities of psychokinetic com- 
plexes. When, however, the lower complexes are 
sufficiently highly organized (as, for example, the 
nervous system of physical organisms) they become 
at once susceptible to the specific activities of the 
plane, or planes, immediately above them. 

In general, therefore, when the units of any plane 
are found organized into those specific complexes 
which compose the units of the plane below, the in- 
terrelations of those lower plane units are in the 
form of the characteristic activities of that plane to 
which they belong. Molecules "interact" molecu- 
larly, not as chemical atoms; atoms chemically, not 
as electric charges; electrons electrically, not 
psychokinetically. 

The complex of psychons which is an electron 
interacts with other electrons as an electric unit, 
not as a mere congeries of psychons. Its relations 
with psychokinetic activities, however, are as a 
psychokinetic complex and not as a unit of elec- 
tricity. They are psychokinetic and not electrical. 
Its psychokinetic relations are inter-electronic. Pro- 
ceeding from below the planes are progressively in- 
clusive. 

But how, it will be asked, can any such state of 
affairs obtain? How are the gaps between the 
planes bridged ? 



84 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

The general interrelation between the unit activi- 
ties of the psychokinetic plane and the unit activi- 
ties of the physical planes, in respect to their natures 
as respectively unextended and extended entities, 
has been described. The specific problem of motion 
in this connection, however, has not yet been ex- 
amined. 

Now, in the first place, it should be observed that, 
in order that a psychokinetic complex (or any other 
entity) should be correlated with motion, it is only 
necessary that it should be in the relation of "all 
terms of a continuous one-dimensional series T 
(Time) to some terms of a continuous three- 
dimensional series S (Space)." But psychokinetic 
entities are always, empirically at any rate, in rela- 
tion to the one-dimensional series T. It is, there- 
fore, only additionally necessary to prove that they 
are (or may be under certain conditions,) in rela- 
tion to a three-dimensional series S. 

If these conditions are fulfilled it is not necessary 
that the entity in question should be a material 
entity or spacial extended. 9 The geometrical point, 
for example, is neither. We have already seen, 
moreover, that there may be spacial relations be- 
tween psychokinetic complexes. And that certain 
psychokinetic complexes at any rate are aware of 
spacial relations we have immediate empirical ex- 
perience. It only remains to be shown, therefore, 

9 See Appendix. Relativity and Activism. 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES So 

how in any specific instance the particular "some" 
terms of the three-dimensional series are correlated 
with particular psychokinetic entities, and how a 
difference in the intensity of these entities is corre- 
lated with a difference in the terms of the three- 
dimensional series with which it is related. 

Now in general it may be said that the greater 
the range of any psychokinetic complex, the more 

will be the terms to which it will be in relation. So 

g 
that if — s= V, (S, of course, being taken here as 

that particular SR which we call D, namely a num- 
ber of terms in the three-dimensional series, S,) 
and we find that as S (the number of terms) in- 
creases, so, proportionately, does V; we have, in 
this case, intensity of psychokinesis correlated with 
velocity. For since all the terms, except its own 
component parts, to which an electron as a unit is 
related are either spacially or temporally condi- 
tioned, an increase in the number of these terms 
means a corresponding increase also in the terms of 
the spacial series, S, or the temporal series T. 

This may be considered to occur as follows. Let 
us suppose the number of psychons in an electron to 
be increased. The psychokinetic intensity of the 
electron, then, is increased proportionately. Now 
one of the elements of intensity is range — inclusive- 
ness — the number of things to which the complex in 



86 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

question is related. But the "things" to which an 
electron is primarily related are all correlated with 
the terms in the one and three-dimensional series T 
and S. Therefore the increase must take place in the 
number of terms either of S or T. And such an 
increase is, of course, either an increase or decrease 
in velocity. 10 Such changes in velocity are accelera- 
tion or retardation. But, if, in this case, change of 
velocity is correlated with change of psychokinetic 
intensity, it follows that when either of the two 
correlates does not change, the other correlate will 
be unchanged also. 

Well ; we can see, in a general way at least, how 
the activities of the psychokinetic plane can be cor- 
related with the activities of the electrical plane 
below. Under exactly what conditions, however, 
any specific correlation may occur is another ques- 
tion. There is, however, an obvious set of circum- 
stances with which we are all familiar where the 
correlation strikingly exists. And that is, in the 
case of organic life, particularly in that of the higher 
organisms. 

According to our hypothesis, then, the universe 
with which we are in any way familiar appears to 
be a stratified affair, transversely divisible into 

10 The reference to the terms in the three-dimensional series 
S are to points as determinants of finite distances, not to 
points in space "as such". 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 87 

what, for want of a more precise word, we have 
called planes. The collective activity of any plane 
being generally more inclusive and intense than the 
activities of the planes next below, although, in 
general, a more highly organized complex upon a 
lower plane may possess greater intensity than a less 
highly organized complex upon the plane, or planes, 
above. 

A progressive analysis, furthermore, of the char- 
acteristic activities of the different planes beginning 
with the lowest always reaches a point where, since 
the analysis can be carried no further upon the 
particular plane under investigation, the activities 
of that plane inevitably break up into complexes 
of the characteristic activity of the plane above. 
Matter is dissolved into electricity, electricity into 
psychokinesis, and psychokinesis, presumably, into 
the static activities of the still more remote regions. 
Each plane, moreover, possesses its own character- 
istic unitary complexes, only certain specific kinds 
of which go to form the basic units of the plane 
next below. And, generally speaking, the inter- 
relations of activities upon the different planes exist 
only between the basic units of one plane and their 
parent activities upon the planes above. The char- 
acteristic complexes of the psychokinetic plane, for 
example, are those awareness complexes known to 
us in "conscious" phenomena; only those complexes 



88 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

organized after the manner which we have just 
pointed out forming electrons. The characteristic 
complexes of the plane of electricity are charges, 
currents, magnetic fields and the like, only certain 
specially organized groups of electrons forming 
atoms. 

There is, however, a further point to be noted in 
connection with the interrelation of the activities of 
the different lower planes. And that is that when 
the velocity of vibration or rotation (when such 
conditions exist) of the units upon any plane is 
increased beyond a certain point it may give rise to, 
processes upon the plane next above. 

Molecular vibration, when sufficiently intense, 
may set up chemical action; chemical action, when 
sufficiently intense, may iniate electric disturbance. 
By analogy, also, it may be presumed that electric 
disturbances of sufficient intensity may set up a cer- 
tain amount of psychokinetic activity. In short the 
activity of any plane may be in dynamic relation 
with the activities of the planes immediately above 
and below it. And finally this condition of affairs is 
found to be possible because we have seen that the 
extended can exist when its component units do not, 
themselves, possess extension, and that motion can 
exist when the moving entities are not material or 
physical entities. 






INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 89 

A psychon, according to our hypothesis, possesses, 
essentially, neither spacial position nor extension. 
Inclusion of psychons in a psychokinetic complex, 
therefore, does not necessarily imply a spacial in- 
clusion. When the organizing relations involved in 
a complex of psychons, however, are the relations 
constitutive of the spacial manifold, the psychons so 
organized are in relation to that manifold — they 
have spacial position. In this case, also, the com- 
plex of psychons so organized has not only spacial 
position but extension as well, although the in- 
dividual psychons which compose the complex do 
not possess any extension. 11 

An electron, then, which has both spacial position 
and extension, is held by the Activist to be com- 
posed of psychons which essentially possess neither; 
although here they are necessarily "in" space owing 
to the specific character of the relations by which 
the unitary psychokinetic complex, called an elec- 
tron, is organized. The component psychons, how- 

11 Since psychons are assumed to be entities not essentially 
in relation to the spacial manifold, it follows that a psycho- 
kinetic change does not necessarily imply change of position 
or motion. The conception of motionless change, however, is 
by no means illogical ; for there exists, even in the physical 
world, one instance at least of a change which is not itself 
motion. Acceleration is change of velocity — or rate of 



90 INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 

ever, do not first have to be "in" spacial positions, 
they "get into" them through being organized by 
the relations of the spacial manifold. 

Furthermore, since an electron is composed of 
psychons, an increase of psychons in an electron 
necessarily increases that electron's amount — its 
intensity. And since the only change which can 
take place in an electron's activity is a change in its 
mass or motion, it would seem to follow that an 
increase in the psychokinetic intensity of an electron 
must be correlated with a change in its mass or 
motion. 

Just, then, as an increase of electrons in an atom 
changes the atom's electric charge and mass, so 
an increase of psychons in an electron changes the 
electron's intensity and its mass or motion. 12 

motion, but acceleration is not itself motion. The change in 
the relations of a moving body to the time series involved in 
acceleration is not in any sense a "motion", since both the 
time series and the relations of any entity to it are non- 
spacial altogether. They are elements in, or logically prior 
to, motion and acceleration. For the Relationist position in 
this matter see Appendix. 

12 The phrase "mass or motion" is employed here on account 
of the generally accepted theory that the mass of an electron 



INTERRELATION OF THE DIFFERENT PLANES 91 

appears to depend largely upon its velocity. Very little is 
yet known about the structure of an electron. It is possi- 
ble that it may be best described as a series of concentric 
fields of force; and if so, it is possible also that such fields 
of force might contract or expand in relation to the center. 
In any event it is difficult to see how any possible change 
in an electron would not involve change in its mass, or 
velocity, or both. A recent discussion of this subject may 
be found in "Relativity and the Electron Theory" by E. Cun- 
ningham. Longmans, Green & Co., 191 5, p. 65 fT. See also 
Appendix on Activism and Relativity. 



CHAPTER 7 

CONSCIOUSNESS 

In speaking of the characteristic activities of the 
psychokinetic plane the term "awareness" has been 
used rather than the term "consciousness". It is 
more fundamental and has acquired less ambiguous 
meanings. As consciousness, however, whether con- 
sidered exclusively in its relation to a physical or- 
ganism or regarded as an activity in its own right, 
constitutes that form of awareness with which, from 
our own immediate experience, we are necessarily 
most familiar, it is essential to examine its specific 
conditions in some detail. 

Consciousness is the name used to describe a 
form of awareness highly complex by reason either 
of its own nature, or of its correlation with an elab- 
orate nervous structure whose functions are both 
widely selective and closely integrative. 1 From the 
point of view which we have developed it would be 
also a psychokinetic complex, unitary at least to the 
extent of its integration. 2 

1 The term "consciousness" is by many writers not limited to 
complex awareness. For our purpose it seems better to re- 
strict the word to its narrower meaning. 

8 That consciousness is unitary to the extent of its integra- 
tion would be true upon any theory as to its real nature. If 
it is only an "aspect" of the nervous system, its integration is 
substantially that of the nervous system itself. If it is a rela- 

(02) 



CONSCIOUSNESS 93 

For the Activist, then, the problem narrows itself 
to a question as to the nature of certain highly 
organized psychokinetic complexes, and the specific 
sort of relations existing between them and the 
physical complexes with which they are associated. 

It should be noted here, moreover, that the gen- 
eral problem remains the same, whether the con- 
stituent elements (ultimately psychons) of the phy- 
sical and psychokinetic complexes are the same, or 
whether the two complexes have only a certain por- 
tion of their elements in common, or whether their 
elements form complexes which are separate and 
distinct. For in any of these circumstances the 
activities of the different planes would be different, 
even though their constituents were altogether or 
partially identical. 

The problem of consciousness, however, evidently 
involves a quite special case of this general interre- 
lationship, namely the relation between one specific 
sort of psychokinetic complex and another equally 
specific sort of psychokinetic complex — the relation 
between a living material organism and the par- 

tion or relational complex between the organism and its total 
environment, its integration is the integration of those rela- 
tions. 

C. S. Sherrington. The Integrative Action of the Nervous 

System. New York, 1906. 
Edwin B. Holt. The Concept of Consciousness. George 
Allen & Company. London, 1914. 



94 CONSCIOUSNESS 

ticular consciousness connected with it. There ex- 
ists, nevertheless, according to our hypothesis at 
any rate, no intrinsic difficulty in the way of an 
adequate description of such relations in general. 
It remains to describe if possible just how this gen- 
eral relationship between psychokinetic and physical 
activities is involved in the specific instance with 
which we are dealing. And this depends largely 
upon the special structure and functions of the 
physical organism on the one hand, and the special 
nature and processes of the psychokinetic complex 
on the other. 

As regards the physical organism it is unneces- 
sary for our purpose to enter into the detail of either 
its structure or function below the nervous system. 
Such investigations belong strictly to the biological 
sciences. Nor is it even essential to examine the 
structure or functions of the nervous system as an 
integrative mechanism. This field belongs to the 
physiologist. The only thing that is of special in- 
terest, at this place, is the nature of the nerve im- 
pulse itself, since it is here if anywhere that exists 
the point of immediate contact between the psycho- 
kinetic and physical activities. 

Now as to the exact nature of the nerve impulse 
there are almost as many and diverse opinions as 
there are investigators. There is, nevertheless, one 
well-established fact in connection with it. And 



CONSCIOUSNESS 95 

that is that, whether or not as a whole the nerve cur- 
rent is in its nature electrical, or whether the method 
of transmission along the fibres is primarily chemi- 
cal, there is always associated with this transmis- 
sion an "action current'', so called, which is purely 
an electric phenomenon. And, furthermore, even if 
this were not so, not only can the nerve impulse be 
directly stimulated by even minute electric disturb- 
ances ; but in general all chemical activity can only 
be regarded in the end as fundamentally electrical 
in character. Any sufficient electric disturbances at 
the cerebral cortex, therefore, or any variation of 
the electrical conditions already existing there has 
an effect upon the activities of the nervous system. 

Let us suppose, then, a psychokinetic complex to 
be in such a relation to the activity of the afferent 
and efferent nerve impulses at their main point of 
interaction — presumably the cerebral cortex — that 
some at any rate of the psychons which compose 
that complex are in efficient relation with the psy- 
chons which ultimately lie at the base of the physical 
activity of the cortex itself. This relation might 
exist in a variety of ways. The cortical psychons 
and those of the psychokinetic complex might be 
actually the same, "taken" in two different orders. 
Some of the cortical psychons (those, for instance, 
forming the electrical positive nuclei of the atoms) 
might be involved ; or those only in a cortical electro- 



96 CONSCIOUSNESS 

magnetic field, if such should exist; or the psy- 
chons in the electrons of the nerve impulses them- 
selves; or those in the electrons of the atomic struc- 
ture of the synapses. 

Be this as it may, a change in the intensity of the 
psychokinetic complex, or the immediately related 
portion of it, would be correlated with an intensive 
change in cortical activity. For just as the addition 
or subtraction of one or more electrons alters an 
atom's electric charge, and causes it to attract or 
repel other atoms, so the addition or subtraction of 
a sufficient number of psychons may be considered 
to alter an electron's psychokinetic intensity, and 
change its dynamic relations to other electrons. 
Awareness between electrons, as we have already 
seen, would then vary with the variation in their 
psychokinetic intensity. In other words, the in- 
crease or decrease of the psychokinetic intensity of 
an electron increases or decreases its range, the ex- 
tent of its awareness of other relations. As an ac- 
tivity, therefore, its capacity for reaction is altered 
to exactly the extent of that increase or diminution. 

But how, it has been asked, can this increase in 
merely psychokinetic intensity bring about an alter- 
ation in the physical relations between electrons? 
How can the increased awareness of one electron 
be anything but a change in its awareness of another 
electron. Or, conversely, how can an alteration in 



CONSCIOUSNESS 97 

the physical relations between electrons be in any 
way correlated with a change in their psychokinetic 
intensities? 

As can readily be appreciated the question is a 
crucial one. A solution of the problem, however, is 
not impossible, as was shown at the conclusion of the 
last chapter. 

Should we accept the explanation given there, the 
problem no longer assumes the portentous char- 
acter of an inquiry into fundamental principles, but, 
difficult though it may be, becomes restricted at 
once to the application of those principles to certain 
specific instances. 

As we have observed, a change in the psycho- 
kinetic intensity of an electron is directly corre- 
lated with a change in its mass or motion. In this 
case, also, the converse is likewise true, since (ex- 
cepting in the case of a solitary electron out of all 
relations with other electrons) an alteration in the 
motion of an electron necessarily alters its relations 
to other electrons and in consequence its awareness 
of the difference in their spacial position. 

Let us now assume a psychokinetic complex in 
immediate relation with a complex of electrons, so 
that there is at any rate a partial correlation between 
the activities of each. What exactly will the inter- 
relations be ? 



98 CONSCIOUSNESS 

Up to a certain point the situation in the physical 
complex is fairly well known. It seems certain 
that at the great cerebral centers, and presum- 
ably at the cortex especially, there is a constant 
inflow and outflow of the nerve impulses together 
with, it is supposed, chemical and electrical changes 
taking place at these points concurrently. Such 
being the case, there will be at these same points a 
continuous increase and decrease in psychokinetic 
intensity due to the alteration of either the velocity 
or direction of the moving electrons constituting 
the action current, as well as the electrical changes 
lying at the base of whatever chemical changes 
occur. Presumably at these points, also, the inter- 
relations between the physical complex and the 
psychokinetic complex with which it is correlated 
will be most clearly apparent. 

Let us suppose, then, a nerve impulse to traverse 
a certain one of these points, say at the synapse be- 
tween the pyramidal cells at one of the sensory 
centers of the cortex. Under these conditions the 
psychokinetic intensity at this point will be increased 
with the motion of the electrons there. This will be 
true, moreover, whatever the exact nature of the 
motion may be. It may be translative as in the 
stream of electrons which constitute an electric 
current, an acceleration of a current already exist- 
ing, or the disturbance of an already existing elec- 



CONSCIOUSNESS 99 

trie field, or a change in the rotary or vibrational 
velocities or directions of the electrons which con- 
stitute the atoms of the nerve fibrils. 

Furthermore this increase of psychokinetic in- 
tensity will be immediately felt in the psychokinetic 
complex of which the psychons at that point are 
either an actual part, or w T ith which they are in 
correlation. The nature of this correlation might 
be of a good many different kinds. It might consist 
of whole or partial numerical identity, of spacial 
propinquity, of some as yet unknown efficient rela- 
tion ; or it might be purely a psychokinetic correla- 
tion due to the influx of psychons from the electrons 
into the psychokinetic complex or vice versa. That 
a correlation of some sort actually exists is, how- 
ever, directly evident from the empirical facts. 

Conversely also a change, or certain kinds of 
change at any rate, in the psychokinetic complex 
will be reflected in a change of motion or direction 
of the electrons at the point in question consequent 
upon the change of their psychokinetic intensities. 

Yet although we must assume this reciprocal 
relationship, the picturing of its precise nature is 
not altogether easy, since we find ourselves per- 
petually prone to imagine psychokinetic units or 
their complexes wholly after the manner of physical 
entities. 

Let us suppose, nevertheless, a portion at least of 
our psychokinetic complex (although the suppo- 



100 CONSCIOUSNESS 

sition is purely diagrammatic and probably quite 
incorrect) to be in the form of a spacially extended 
group of psychons, a sort, if you will, of psycho- 
kinetic field. And let us suppose, further, the elec- 
trons of the nerve impulse, or those in the atoms of 
the nerve fibres themselves, to be moving through, or 
revolving within, this "field." Now whether the 
nerve impulse be altogether electric in character, 
consisting, that is, of a current or moving stream of 
electrons ; or whether it be chemical, in which case 
the interatomic electronic revolutions or vibrations, 
or the electrons of the charge which the atom 
carries are primarily affected ; or both electrical and 
chemical — in any of these events the psychokinetic 
intensity of the electrons in the field will be increased 
with the influx of that impulse. And as electrons 
are, ex hypothesi, also themselves psychokinetic 
complexes, an increase in their intensity involves a 
corresponding increase of intensity in the field so 
long as the electrons are moving through it, or 
revolving in it, as the case may be. 

In general, likewise, the condition of heightened 
intensity would last just as long as the influx con- 
tinued. Conversely, an increase of intensity in the 
field from any other source than that of the inflow- 
ing electrons would increase the intensity of the 
electrons already in the field, and therefore, accord- 
ing to the general theory of interrelationship 



CONSCIOUSNESS 101 

outlined, set up an electrical activity among them. 

The only condition that it is necessary to posit 
in order that such a state of affairs should obtain is 
that the hypothetical psychokinetic field in question 
should be coterminous spacially with some portion 
of the line of flow of the nerve impulse (or of the 
nerve fibre itself), so that the electrons of the im- 
pulse (or the atoms of the fibre) should be within 
the field itself at that point. 

Now this presentation of a possible manner of 
correlation is obviously crude, and the actual con- 
ditions are presumably much more subtle and com- 
plex. It gives, nevertheless, some general idea of 
how such a correlation might actually exist. 

Should the locus of correlation between the 
psychokinetic complex and, at any rate, the efferent 
nerve impulse be interatomic, moreover, there 
already exists a well-known experiment in physics 
which points strongly in the direction of an explana- 
tion as to how such a condition might occur. 

This is the experiment known as the Zeeman 
effect. 3 

3 Righi's Modern Theory of Physical Phenomena I (N. Y. 
The Macmillan Co. 1909) p. 14 ff. and Robert W. Wood's 
Physical Optics, (N. Y. The Macmillan Co. 191 1) p. 500 ff., 
both give an excellent discussion of Zeeman's classic experi- 
ment. There is also some experimental evidence, as yet incon- 
clusive, which appears to indicate the possibility of some such 
psychokinetic effect upon the interatomic motion of electrons 
as the one which has been suggested. 



102 CONSCIOUSNESS 

When an incandescent gas is subjected to the 
influence of a strong magnetic field, and its spectrum 
examined through a sufficiently powerful telescope, 
the influence of the magnetic field, as the current is 
turned on, is clearly shown by the splitting up of a 
single characteristic spectrum; line of the gas into 
two or more separate lines. This singular effect is 
produced by an alteration in the rotation or vibra- 
tion of the electrons within the gaseous atoms; 
which alteration, in its turn, changes the frequency 
of the light waves propagated by these whirling or 
vibrating electrons. The effect of this change of 
frequency is then visible through the spectroscope 
as an alteration in the lines of the spectrum. 

Now if in place of the magnetic force which, 
of course, acts upon the moving electrons in the 
atoms from without, we may imagine a psycho- 
kinesis "acting upon" the electrons from within, 
through the heightening of their psychokinetic in- 
tensity and consequent increase of velocity, we 
should find a change in their periods of rotation or 
vibration similar to that which can be observed in 
the Zeeman effect. And if that change were suffi- 
ciently great, we should expect electric, or possibly 
even chemical, changes to follow in the physical 
system in which the change occurred. 

Furthermore, if this description of the correla- 
tion between a psychokinetic and physical complex 



CONSCIOUSNESS 103 

as essentially interatomic should be in any way 
correct, it obviously falls into line with the general 
law already laid down that the interrelation of the 
activities of the different planes take place by means 
of the fundamental unit activities of these planes — 
by reason, that is, of the fact that the fundamental 
units upon any plane are always unitary complexes 
of the fundamental units of the plane next above. 

Well — it has been pointed out here, in a general 
way, in what, for the Activist, the psycho-physical 
correlation may be considered to consist. It remains 
to be shown how the variation of intensity in the 
psychokinetic complex itself may be held to consti- 
tute the different psychic processes with which we 
are familiar. 

Now upon any theory the problem of the relation 
between awareness and its object is obscure and 
complicated enough, and perhaps the most that can 
be hoped is that the hypothesis under consideration 
may prove a little less unsatisfactory than the more 
traditional explanations. At any rate it possesses 
the obvious advantage of being free from one of the 
principal difficulties of the older theories; since, 
for it, objects do not have to be somehow "gotten 
into" consciousness, for as fundamentally them- 
selves awareness, simple or complex, they are 
already "there" from the start. 



104 CONSCIOUSNESS 

The problem, then, may be stated as follows: 
( i ) Under what conditions is one awareness (simple 
or complex) aware of another awareness; and (2) 
How far can the qualitative differences of aware- 
ness be correlated with difference of "intensity" as 
we have defined that term. 

The problem of the "transmission of the quali- 
ties" of an object by a dynamic mechanism whose 
activity is measured altogether quantitatively, as 
light and heat by ether waves, or sense qualities by 
the nerve impulse, is a further difficulty which exists 
for all theories alike and which need not be ex- 
amined at present. For the moment, also, the first 
question (1) may be passed over, since it is ob- 
viously the second (2) that concerns us most imme- 
diately at this point. 

Can, then, the intensive differences in a psycho- 
kinetic complex explain in any way the qualitative 
differences of the psychic processes? Thus stated 
it is, we see at once, the old question, although in a 
slightly unfamiliar guise, of the compounding of 
consciousness. How can one get quality out of 
quantity, color out of light vibrations, feeling out 
of sensation, and all the rest of it? And yet, if one 
looks about, the world is full of just that sort of 
thing. Organisms are composed of cells, but they 
behave as indivisible units, possess "qualities" that no 
amount of cells "as such" could possess. So do 



CONSCIOUSNESS 105 

cells possess "qualities" unpossessed by atoms or 
electrons. Everywhere we find unitary complexes 
possessing functions and apparently unanalyzable 
characteristics — qualities — which their component 
units, either singly or in groups, do not possess. 
So on all sides we discover the "compounding" of 
activities. There would seem, therefore, to be no 
peculiar difficulty in assuming the same general con- 
dition to hold also for those special activities which 
we know as conscious processes. It is simply a 
question as to how in that particular case the "com- 
pounding" may be considered to take place. The 
fact that we are unable to trace the conditions accu- 
rately does not constitute a valid reason for denying 
their possibility. 

But let us briefly re-examine just what is meant 
by the term "intensity", as we have used it, in con- 
nection with a psychokinetic complex. As a stand- 
ard of measurement for activity in general, includ- 
ing of course psychokinesis as an activity in par- 
ticular, it involves the elements of amount, range, 
persistence, and exclusion. 

Now the intensive variation of a psychokinetic 
complex as regards persistence, or duration, is com- 
paratively simple to understand, since it is not diffi- 
cult to imagine any condition in such a complex as 
lasting for a shorter or longer period of time. Ex- 
clusion also, empirically at least, is clearly enough 
shown in the phenomena of attention, the principal 



106 CONSCIOUSNESS 

characteristic of the attentive state being the exclu- 
sion of extrinsic content. Moreover range — the 
extent to which the complex in question "makes a 
difference" to other activities — need not concern us 
at this point. 

The remaining element of intensity, however, has 
a special bearing upon the immediate problem. For 
amount is essentially connected with content — the 
"number of things" of which a psychokinetic com- 
plex is aware. The more or less of psychons, or 
their subsidiary complexes, in any given complex 
implies, ex hypothesi, a more or less of awareness 
objects. This follows from the mere fact of the 
more or less of the relations involved. Increase in 
intensity in this case signifies, the other elements 
being equal, increase in content, and variation of 
intensity variation of content. If there could be dis- 
covered, therefore, the specific increase of intensity 
in a given psychokinetic complex — the specific in- 
crease in amount, or content — due to a specific rela- 
tion to some other specific activity, the main part 
of the problem, for the Activist at any rate, would 
thereby be solved. For if we could discover in any 
given case the exact intensity concomitant, for ex- 
ample, ^with the presence of a specific sensation, the 
psychokinesis involved at that specific intensity 
would be the sense datum itself. 4 

* For the additional element of periodicity involved here see 
p. 80 ff . 



CONSCIOUSNESS 107 

Now of course any theory whatever is neces- 
sarily faced with this problem in one form or an- 
other. Even purely physiological psychology cannot 
escape it. How, for example, do specific degrees of 
light vibrations get themselves reproduced, or ex- 
emplified, as correlated specific neural processes in 
the optic centers? 5 And since they obviously must, 
in some way, represent these discriminations, it does 
not add to the general theoretic difficulty to suppose 
them to be equally well represented in the variations 
of psychokinetic intensity. 

In some cases at least, moreover, a consideration 
of the essential nature of the psychokinetic complex 
and its intensive changes may lead to a more ade- 
quate description of this correlation. 

Let us take the simplest example — that of sensa- 
tion; and let us assume — although possibly with- 
out warrant — that a simple sensation can exist. 

An approximation might be found in the sensa- 
tion obtained upon suddenly awakening from sleep, 
in an open field under a cloudless sky. Momentarily 
at any rate then, it would seem that celestial blueness 
would be the sole visual sensation. 

5 For an excellent discussion of this problem from the point 
of view of psysiological psychology, see "Human Psychol- 
ogy", p. 435 if., by Howard C. Warren, Houghton Mifflin Co. 
I9IQ. 



108 CONSCIOUSNESS 

Now the particular blue which would consti- 
tute the sense datum under these circumstances is 
caused, as we all know, by certain definite stimuli 
(wave motions of the ether presumably) imping- 
ing upon the retina with a certain definite period- 
icity. And this periodicity would naturally be 
reproduced (whether discretely or "summed up" 
in some way) in the periodicity of intensive 
changes in the psychokinetic complex. Objectively, 
of course also, vibrations of just that periodicity 
are blue light of just that shade. Why then should 
not just that periodicity of intensive psychokinetic 
variation be also the same blue light "subjectively" 
in the awareness complex itself? 

According to this suggestion "blue" is intrinsically 
a certain definite periodicity no matter where it 
occurs. As etheric waves it is color as light, as 
intensive psychokinetic variations it is color as sen- 
sation. Color, then, will be both in the object and 
in the mind, and yet be the same color. 

Although no theory of color is free from diffi- 
culties, the realistic theory here put forth seems on 
the whole to possess at least the merit of a certain 
simplicity. It assumes (i) that the periodicity in- 
duced (as psychokinetic or possibly electronic 
changes) upon a material surface by the impinging 
light rays (white sunlight), as modified by the struc- 
ture (psychokinetic or electronic) of that surface, is 



CONSCIOUSNESS 109 

the color of that surface. It assumes (2) that 
light of the same periodicity — the same color — is, 
then, reflected from the surface, and (3) trans- 
mitted, in some as yet undiscovered way, through 
the nervous system, until, finally, the same peri- 
odicity is reproduced in changes of psychokinetic 
intensity — i. e., in consciousness. 

Whether the color "quality" results from "sum- 
ming up," or some other characteristic associated 
with such a periodicity as a series of changes, is a 
further question. It would seem however legiti- 
mate to assume that, even were this the case, the 
"summing up," or other characteristic involved, 
would be present in any psychokinetic complex, 
whether that complex were the surface of an "in- 
animate object" or the awareness centers of a living 
organism. 

The same thing would also be true of all the 
vibratory phenomena and their correlative sensa- 
tions — sound, heat, electric stimuli, and the rest 
of them. 

What is called, in technical psychology, "in- 
tensity", i. e. y degree of loudness, brightness, etc., is 
purposely left out of consideration at this point, 
because it is so largely relative — due, that is, to the 
general intensive "level" of the psychokinetic com- 
plex, as well as so intimately connected with the 
subject of attention. The problem of its correla- 



110 CONSCIOUSNESS 

tions also is obviously much simpler, since a more 
or less of the same sort of phenomenon is essentially 
quantitative from the start. 

There are several other points, however, to be 
noted briefly here. 

Color, as we know, considered psychologically, 
may vary in three ways, hue, tint, and chroma. 6 

Hue is accounted for by the periodicities of 
psychokinetic change corresponding to light wave 
frequencies. 

Tint is quantitative, induced principally by light 
wave amplitude, and is represented by the amount of 
psychokinesis involved as the result of any given 
visual stimulus. 

Chroma, which is due to saturation, or the quan- 
tity of white light mixed with the pure spectral color, 
is somewhat more complicated. Nevertheless, when 
it is considered that almost any number of periodic 
changes may go on at the same time in a sufficiently 
developed psychokinetic complex the problem seems 
less serious. White light itself is a complex of 
such periodicities, and the amount of saturation is 
simply due to the extent to which this complex 
enters into a further complex composed, in its turn, 

6 Titchener's classification is followed here. Breeze and some 
others use "tint" as an equivalent for light shades; Warren 
uses it for chroma. Possibly "color-brightness," or "color- 
shade" would be a better term. See Warren "Human Psy- 
chology," pp. 165 ff. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 111 

of white light and the periodicity of a pure spectral 
color. The awareness here, therefore, is of this 
further complex as a whole — the awareness con- 
tent, sensation, being the unitary complex of just 
these psychokinetic periodicities. 

Black, again, or the absence of color periodici- 
ties, is only perceived as a color by means of light. 
For even as darkness, when opening the eyes at 
night, it is never wholly free from the retinal 
luminosity, the contrast, psychokinetic change, be- 
tween it and light being either perceived or remem- 
bered. 

Nor should it be forgotten that, empirically at 
any rate, psychic content is always changing and 
so involves psychokinetic change; and that a psy- 
chokinetic decrease in intensity may be just as 
positive a sensation as an increase of intensity. 

Space perception is a knottier question. For al- 
though we have shown how a psychon, or a psycho- 
kinetic complex, can be in relation to the spacial 
manifold (Chapter 6, p. 62 ff.), we have not shown 
definitely how it can be aware of such a three 
dimensional series. It seems clear, also, that this 
relation can exist without implying any awareness 
of it. 

The problem is difficult enough upon any theory. 
If we start, however, with the conception of 
such a sensation of crude extension — of undefined 



112 CONSCIOUSNESS 

"amount" of color — as our awakened sleeper would 
probably receive from a cloudless blue sky, the 
problem becomes simpler. 

For any psychokinetic complex is characterized 
by the "amount" of its psychokinesis — the number 
of psychons which compose it. The extent, there- 
fore, to which the periodicity of any activity with 
which a psychokinetic complex is in relation can be 
reproduced in the complex, is necessarily limited by 
the "amount" of activity to which the periodic con- 
dition applies. 

Now the periodic change in psychokinetic inten- 
sity here must be a recurrent increase and decrease 
in either range or amount. It would seem never- 
theless simpler, in the case of an impinging neural 
stimulus, to consider it a periodic change in 
amount due to a periodic increase and decrease in 
the electric current (stream of electrons) asso- 
ciated (or identical with) the nerve impulse. 

Physiologically this is correlated, of course, with 
the extent to which the end organ in the case of any 
given stimulus is involved, and, presumably, with the 
number of nerve fibres implicated or the quantity 
of nerve impulse transmitted, or both. 

Psychokinetically it is correlated with the extent to 
which the psychokinetic complex is involved. The 
quantity, for example, of light waves set in motion 
by a single rotating or vibrating electron would 



CONSCIOUSNESS 113 

obviously be less than the quantity of waves set in 
motion by a hundred vibrating electrons. The num- 
ber of psychons accordingly, whose periodic in- 
tensive changes could be affected, would vary with 
the amount of the waves with which they were 
in relation. There would be more or less of the 
same color as there was a greater or less amount 
of etheric waves. And this condition is, as a matter 
of fact, rather neatly exemplified empirically; for 
in the purest cases brightness and size (extent) seem 
to be substantially the same, as in the fixed stars 
where there is no real visable extension, but only 
an apparent extension due to brilliancy. 

The simple sensation of space then — of crude 
extension — appears to be directly correlated with 
amount, the "extent" to which the psychokinetic 
complex is involved. If all the psychokinesis pos- 
sible, for example, is set changing intensively with 
a certain periodicity by the total physiological 
activity of the optic nervous mechanism, the sensa- 
tion involves the entire field of visual awareness. 
The color has the maximum extension. The 
colored "surface" fills the whole field. If the mini- 
mum amount of psychokinesis is involved, the sensa- 
tion is of a mere point or speck of the same color. 7 

7 This would still be true even if the "extension" were 
wholly relative to fixation distance, and the angles of the 
horopter. 



114 CONSCIOUSNESS 

Moreover, since the psychokinetic complex may 
be supposed to be in spacial relation with the differ- 
ent nerve fibres at various points spacially distinct, 
it may well be considered to be itself aware of these 
spacial differentiae and, to that degree at least, 
directly aware of spacial extension — its own spacial 
relationships between spacially distinct portions of 
its own unitary complex. 

For when the spacial relations in which a psycho- 
kinetic complex stands are of such a character as 
directly to affect its intensive variations, it is clear 
that an awareness of those special relations, in so far 
as they affect its intensity, must exist also. And a 
psychokinetic complex in spacial relations with a 
complex system of nerve endings (or cortical cen- 
ters) is in just that situation. 

It would seem, therefore, to be by no means impos- 
sible to correlate at least the sensation of crude 
extension with psychokinetic intensity. 

In a brief essay, however, it is impossible to work 
out the problem in detail — form, contrast, and all the 
rest of it. All that can be done, and all that is really 
necessary here, it to show that the general principle 
of such a correlation can be established. 

It would appear then that, for the Activist at any 
rate, such qualities as color and spacial extension 
can be "gotten over" into sensation, can be stated 
in terms of psychokinetic intensity. Color can be 



CONSCIOUSNESS 115 

"gotten over" because, as essentially a certain 
periodicity, it "is" wherever that particular period- 
icity occurs. 

Extension can be "gotten over" because a psycho- 
kinetic complex may not only be in relation to the 
spacial three dimensional series, but also may be 
aware of its own intensive condition concomitant 
with its relation to that manifold. 

There remains to be considered the differences 
between the kinds of sense data furnished by the 
separate sense organs. How can sound, light, touch, 
and the others be stated differentially in intensive 
terms? 

At first sight this would seem impossible. For 
the essential characteristic of these separate senses 
seems to be an unanalyzable qualitative differen- 
tiation. Nevertheless in this case also the distinct 
periodicities which characterize the stimuli that 
give rise to the various classes of sensation may 
prove, when stated in terms of the same period- 
icities of intensive change, entirely adequate to 
account for the different orders of sensation. 

Touch, for example, may well be a change of 
intensity simply quantitative, the "amount" of it 
constituting the "mass" or extent of pressure felt: 
Sound, a change of intensity characterized by a rela- 
tively slow periodicity — 40 to 40,000 per second, 
roughly : Light an enormously rapid psychoid- 



116 CONSCIOUSNESS 

netive periodicity — some 400,000,000,000 per sec- 
ond and upward. While taste and smell may be 
certain specific periodicities due to chemical changes 
excited at the respective end organs. 

How such enormous variations in periodicity can 
be taken up and differentiated by the nervous system 
is a problem for the physiologist. There would be 
good reason to suppose, however, that psychokinetic 
discrimination would be more delicate in every way. 
The great gaps, also, between the various series of 
periodicities — as, for example, between light and 
sound — might account for the awarenesses of these 
widely separated series as distinct sensations. 

Our point, however, is that these respective peri- 
odicities are pressures, colors, sounds, and the rest, 
wherever % they occur, so that when they take place 
in the intensive variations of a psychokinetic com- 
plex, they are there, actually, where they do take 
place. And since, ex hypothesis its own intensive 
conditions and changes are essentially the things of 
which such a complex is immediately aware, those 
intensive changes which are color, sound, touch, 
and the rest, constitute the sense data themselves. 

The localization of certain sense data — as spaci- 
ally "external" — of certain objects as "out there" — 
is of course a further question. It seems not improb- 
able however that this awareness of spacial "ex- 
ternality" is a complex matter requiring inference — 



CONSCIOUSNESS 117 

the additional relations involved in at least rudi- 
mentary "thought" — and that such "externality" is 
not immediately given. 

The localization of sensation in various parts of 
the body, again, may perhaps consist in that co-ordi- 
nation of any specific intensive change with the 
awareness of spacial relations which has already 
been discussed. 

The whole problem is complex enough upon any 
hypothesis. It would seem, nevertheless, that we 
are justified in assuming that a psychokenitic com- 
plex is aware of the different sense data which reach 
it through the separate cortical centers as distinct 
sense data. Their periodicity might be similar (as 
from similar pressures upon different parts of the 
body), but these periodic changes might well in- 
volve distinct sub-complexes within the whole 
psychokinetic complex, and thus still carry with them 
the relation of separateness between them into the 
general awareness. 

Pain is more difficult to explain intensively, but 
it may perhaps be, finally, some sort of disruption 
or syncopation of the normal rhythmic periodicities 
either in themselves or their complex relations. 

Feeling, as technically employed by the phychol- 
ogists, is usually restricted to the awareness of 
pleasantness or unpleasantness ; and it is better, for 



118 CONSCIOUSNESS 

us here at any rate, to confine ourselves to this funda- 
mental conception of it. 

Although in a certain sense immediately given, 
since its essential character depends upon the nature 
of the stimulus, it is obviously conditioned also by 
the response, since the same stimulus may, under 
different circumstances at different times, give rise 
to quite opposite feelings. Like the sensation of 
pain it is probably due principally to the disturbance, 
or brusque interruption, of the normal psychoki- 
netic periodicities already dominant in the psycho- 
kinetic complex. This arhythmic quality would ac- 
count for the fact that the same feelings are not 
always associated with similar stimuli, for the dis- 
ruption is relative ; the state of the complex at any 
moment, as well as the nature of the stimulus, being 
a controlling factor. This disruptive quality is 
clearly enough shown in ordinary language by such 
vernacular phrases as "it jars me", "it upsets me", 
and the like. The quantitative measure of the feel- 
ing, also, can evidently be measured by the usual 
intensive elements of amount, range, duration, and 
exclusion. 

Unpleasantness, then, would seem to be the ge- 
neric appellation for arhythmic psychokinetic dis- 
turbances, and vice-versa: the smoothness of flow 
of the interrelated periodicities being pleasantness, 
and its opposite unpleasantness. Where the rhyth- 



CONSCIOUSNESS 119 

mic quality, or its opposite, is of insufficient intensity 
to be a conspicuous factor in the awareness of the 
moment, the feelings remain neutral or practically 
unaroused. 

In passing, also, it may be noted here that rhythm, 
or the lack of it, is an important element in proc- 
esses of all kinds, including changes in psychoki- 
netic intensity, and that as a fact in itself apart 
from the specific processes of which it is an element, 
it has not been sufficiently emphasized of late. It is, 
says the much maligned Spencer, "the characteristic 
of all motion'' ; and he might well have added, of all 
change. It plays unquestionably, upon any theory, 
a conspicuous part in determining the specific 
"qualities" of many of the pyschic processes. 8 

8 This whole subject of rhythm, whether psychologically or 
intrinsically considered, has occupied, perhaps, too little of 
the scientific attention. It may well be a much more important 
determining element everywhere than is generally recognized. 

Certain Oriental systems have recognized its importance, but 
among us Westerners, Herbert Spencer and John Fiske are 
among the few who have treated it philosophically in any 
detail. 

As an essential factor involved in emotion it is by no means 
improbable that further investigation would reveal an intimate 
connection between arhythmic and abnormal conditions, either 
neural, psychic, or both, especially in the cases of the so-called 
"affect psychoses/' 

Herbert Spencer. First Principles. Chapter 10. (N. Y., D. 
Appleton & Co., 1898.) 

John Fiske. Cosmic Philosophy. Part 2, Chapter 2. 
(Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1892.) 



120 CONSCIOUSNESS 

So much for sensation and feeling. Another im- 
mediately given element which enters into the 
psychic content is imagery. 

Now the difference between a specific sensation, 
say of color, and the corresponding image of it 
seems to be fundamentally quantitative, at any rate 
when measured in terms of psychokinetic intensity 
as we have defined it — the elements of intensity 
being, as will be remembered, amount, range, per- 
sistence, and exclusion. In regard to all of these 
elements the image is quantitatively less than the 
sensation. Its amount is less — it possesses less 
vividness, "intensity" in the ordinary psychological 
sense. Its exclusion is less, — its hold on the atten- 
tive field is less firm. Its duration is less — images 
are notoriously fleeting and evanescent. And its 
range is less — it possesses less clearness, is character- 
ized by precision in a more restricted number of 
details. It will, nevertheless, be an image of the 
same color notwithstanding its inferior intensity 
(in any or all the elements thereof) because its 
periodicity is the same. And since that particular 
psychokinetic periodicity is that color (as sensa- 
tion) ; where the periodicity is there will the color 
be also, whatever its intensity may be. 

Perhaps attention should be again called to the 
fact that the "locus" of the periodicities with which 
we are dealing here is in the psychokinetic complex. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 121 

A color, as a certain periodicity, is in the object, the 
awareness complex, and the connecting media — is, 
in fact, all along the line. But a color as a sense 
datum is essentially in the awareness complex itself. 
Such a "locus", however, does not necessarily im- 
ply spacial position. It implies psychokinetic inclu- 
sion only. 

Yet, if this is all there is to it, how can an image 
be distinguished from a similar sensation of suffi- 
ciently feeble intensity, or a sufficiently intense image 
from a sensation? The answer is that it cannot. 
If a sensation is sufficiently feeble in all of the 
three intensive elements it cannot be clearly dis- 
tinguished from an image. 9 If an image possesses 
all three of them to a sufficient degree, it becomes 
a hallucination. 

It is perhaps needless to say that under normal 
circumstances in broad daylight these limiting con- 
ditions are scarcely ever reached, and that in prac- 
tice the distinction is usually both easy and and 
definite. 

The images with which we are ordinarily familiar, 
however, are not of the simple kind which, for the 
purposes of a clearer analysis, we have been dis- 
cussing. On the contrary they are nearly always 

9 The experimental demonstration of the essential similarity 
between image and sensation is discussed at length by Titch- 
ener. A Text-book of Psychology. The Macmillan Co. N. 
Y. 1910, p. 197 ff. 



122 CONSCIOUSNESS 

memory images, or at any rate presentations in 
which some reference to past experience is implicit. 
And this brings up at once the problem of memory 
and its relation to psychokinetic intensity. 

Now there are three fundamental questions in 
regard to memory and memory images. One is the 
problem of retention; the second the problem of 
reference, or relation to the past ; and the third, the 
problem of reference to the specific time of any past 
event. 

The first problem applies to all images, since 
obviously any image, either as a whole or in its con- 
stituent elements, depends upon past "experience" of 
some kind. The subject is obscure and has never 
been satisfactorily explained, but the generally 
accepted view seems to be that any organic complex 
which has previously responded in certain ways to 
specific stimuli, may be impelled to similar (although 
usually less intense) responses either by a repetition 
of the original stimulus, or by an indirect arousal of 
the secondary responses through some interrelated 
processes — as e. g. the neural processes connected 
with the associational centers of the cerebral cortex. 
According to this view there is, of course, no "reten- 
tion", strictly speaking, aside from the tendency to 
similar response — the revived response being differ- 
entiated from an initially aroused psychic process 
by those qualities — lack of clearness, duration, 



CONSCIOUSNESS 123 

strength, etc., which have already been noted as dis- 
tinguishing imaginal characteristics. 

It is evident, then, that if this physiological basis 
is sufficient for "retention", its relation to the corre- 
sponding psychokinetic intensity (already outlined) 
presents no fresh problem. The modus operandi is 
the same as for sensation. 10 

It should be observed here, however, that if the 
neural processes can be revived in this way, it would 
presumably follow that, since these processes like all 
physical processes are ultimately a form of psycho- 
kinesis, the psychokinetic processes themselves would 
possess a similar capacity of revivification under 
requisite conditions. In other words that "reten- 
tion" might be psychokinetic as well as neural. The 
same, of course, would be true for association. Pos- 
sibly both conditions may be essential. 

The problem of "pastness" — or the conscious 
reference of images to previous experience — has 
given a great deal of trouble. We have already as- 
sumed, however, that a psychokinetic complex is 

10 There are so many difficulties in any physiological theory 
of memory that Bergson, in his well known "Matiere et 
Memoire", was led to discard such explanations altogether. 
The general view among psychologists, nevertheless, is that a 
satisfactory physico-chemical basis for retention will, one of 
these days, be discovered. For our purpose, therefore, it 
seems best to accept, uncritically, the prevailing opinion. For 
an excellent discussion of the possible physiological basis of 
retention see Warren, "Human "Psychology, p. 437 ff. 



124 CONSCIOUSNESS 

aware not only of entities (psychons and their com- 
plexes), but of relations; and that the relations of 
which it is aware "get into" its awareness in connec- 
tion with the entities with which these relations are 
essentially associate^. Two distinct colors, for 
example, are perceived not only as colors, but also 
as distinct. The relation of dissimilarity comes in 
with them. But different colors perceived at the 
same time are usually, as well, spacially separate. 
In this case the separateness relation comes in also. 
The two periodicities do not travel in isolation, but 
carry their mutual interrelations with them. It is 
further evident, moreover, that two color periodi- 
cities need not occur at the same moment of time, 
but that one may precede the other, and that the 
change in psycho-kinetic intensity which is the cessa- 
tion of a periodicity would be an awareness object 
as well as that change w r hich is the incipience of 
periodicity. But an awareness of change implies an 
awareness of temporal sequence. And here, at any 
rate, change in awareness is awareness of change. 

This awareness of pastness in general, therefore, 
is postulated in our original hypothesis. And the 
postulate would appear to be justified, if for no 
other reason, because empirically it is a fact that we 
are immediately aware of temporal sequence. 

Specifically nevertheless the question may be 
asked how any given image can be taken to "refer" 



CONSCIOUSNESS 125 

to some definite past time, and how this past 
reference can be expressed in psychokinetic terms. 
The truth of this matter, however, would seem to 
be that such specific reference is not a question of 
pastness at all, but of association. The general con- 
dition of a relation to the temporal series attaches 
to all images, either as a whole, or to the imaginal 
elements of which they are the unitary complex. The 
specific character of that relation — the specific place 
in the temporal series which it implies — appears to 
depend altogether upon the character of the asso- 
ciated images revived with the principal image in 
any given case. My "memory" of the blue seen last 
Sunday is referred to "last Sunday'', because the 
blue image is associated with the open field where I 
was reclining when I opened my eyes upon the cloud- 
less sky, the Sunday atmosphere of too much break- 
fast, the distant church bells, and the rest of it. 
With more unfamiliar, remote, or less specific im- 
ages, it is often quite impossible to "place" them 
definitely. All that exists is the general vague sense 
of pastness. 

Psychokinetically, therefore, all that is necessary 
to posit is that the associated images should occur 
together synchronously. As to the relation to past- 
ness in general, the relation of psychokinetic condi- 
tions to the time series is, as we have seen, funda- 
mental. The further consideration of the aware- 



126 CONSCIOUSNESS 

ness of relations as such will be discussed more in 
detail later. 

We have now considered — very briefly — from the 
standpoint of Activism, those psychic elements im- 
mediately derived from the world about us — sensa- 
tion, feeling, and image, with its derivative, memory. 
There remains to be considered from the same stand- 
point the more complex psychic processes — atten- 
tion, perception, thought, emotion, and will. 

With the last four of these we are faced once 
more with the question of the compounding of con- 
sciousness. 

Attention, however, does not raise this point. It 
is not a specific "state" like sensation or image, but 
involves merely the relative intensity of differ- 
ent psychokinetic conditions. It is the extent to 
which any given condition occupies the psycho- 
kinetic complex — "fills the mind" literally. The 
degree of attention existing in any such condition 
depends directly upon that element in intensity 
which we have called "exclusion", which in its turn, 
is the relative degree of amount, range, and dura- 
tion. 11 Attention, then, is psychokinetic intensity — 
measured however, in the case of any specific con- 

"The "clearness" which Titchener and others consider as 
the distinguishing attribute of attention, evidently depends 
upon these three intensive elements of amount, range, and 
duration. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 127 

tent, relatively to the total intensity of the whole 
complex, at that moment. 

It is altogether an affair of intensive quantity. 

This does not mean that several of such relatively 
absorbing intensities may not exist synchronously, 
or that the difference between them may not itself 
constitute a content of attentive awareness. For 
example, the thin high note of a violin E string may 
be perceived during a thunder clap, but the relative 
intensity of the contrast makes it audible. For rela- 
tions, as activities, have their intensities also. At- 
tention in itself, therefore, does not involve any 
"compounding". 

Perception, however, obviously involves more 
than a simple element. That which is perceived 
must, in the first place, possess sufficient relative 
intensity to arouse attention. The amount of psy- 
chokinesis involved, as well as its duration and 
range — the extent to which associated processes are 
aroused — must be great enough to exclude other 
processes. 12 

In the case of sense perception, for example, the 
sensation must also be connected with the appro- 
priate image in such a way that the image is part 
of the content. It is possible that the image might 

" It is upon the intensive element of exclusion as a deriva- 
tive of amount, range and duration, that depends what Wundt 
seems to mean by apperception — the "bringing of content info 
clear comprehension". 



128 CONSCIOUSNESS 

be a "generic" image, rather than a pure memory 
image. It seems wiser here, however, not to enter 
the recent discussion concerning imageless thought. 
In any event perception involves more elements than 
mere sensation. It involves at the very least, aware- 
ness of sensation, image, and the relation of like- 
ness between them. It is, therefore, a complex 
awareness, a combination of different psychic ele- 
ments, so that we have here, at any rate, a content 
which is "compound''. 13 

For the activist, however, there is no reason what- 
ever that such a combination of periodicities and the 
relations of similarity between them should not 
exist, nor that the complex which they form should 
not be essentially a unitary complex. In fact it is 
just this sort of thing that unitary complexes are ; 
and the world is full of them both on and off the 
psychokinetic plane. That their constituent ele- 
ments can be quantitively determined and stated in 
terms of psychokinetic intensity in no* way impairs 
their unitary character. 

13 Many Psychologists as Warren (p. 234 ff., "Human Psy- 
chology", and Titchener, p. 364 ff., Textbook of Psychology), 
speak of ef simple perception" — as the perception of a mass 
of colored points in a single field. This would seem to the 
author to be, rather, a "compound", or "summated" sensation, 
perception proper carrying with it always a relation of "differ- 
ence from" or "likeness to" some other sensation, or (usually) 
some other image. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 129 

We have, so far, briefly analyzed only the simplest 
kind of sense perception, but the general application 
of the principle of the unitary complex holds good 
for more elaborate complexes as well. It is funda- 
mentally a question of the quantity of the associated 
imagery — psychological meaning. 

In regard to the more complex psychic processes, 
such as thought, it is exceedingly difficult to enter 
into any discussion of them without immediately 
becoming involved in psychological controversy. 
Yet without some definition a statement of these 
processes in psychokinetic terms is impossible. 
What for example, is the precise difference, psy- 
chologically, between a percept and concept? One 
has only to ask the question, and the immeasureable 
abysses of metaphysics at once fly open. Is a con- 
cept, psychologically, merely an image — a percept 
where the image perceived is that of a word, or a 
concrete thing, differing from other percepts only in 
its associative content — its meaning, or reference? 
Or is it something intrinsically different sub specie 
qiialitatis? Is meaning, after all, something more, 
psychologically, than content? And a host of sim- 
ilar difficulties and questions. 

Now whether the immediate object of awareness 
in conception is an image or not, it is obvious that 
the total psychological content is characterized by 



130 CONSCIOUSNESS 

conditions which differentiate it from the content in 
perception. 

In the first place, the content in conception lacks 
the sense datum. There are in it, as essential ele- 
ments, neither sensation, nor sense perception. It 
consists almost wholly of a more or less complex 
series of relations plus, usually, an image or series 
of images, the relational complex however being the 
important factor. 14 

The question for us here, therefore, is can these 
relational complexes which constitute the chief 
element in the content of a concept be described and 
differentiated quantitatively in terms of intensity? 

Now the differences between specific relations 
would seem at first sight finally qualitative. There 
is, nevertheless, between them a difference in range. 
For the things, for example, which such a relation 
as "above" can characterize, are evidently more than 
the things to which such a relation as "tangent to" 
can refer. And in the end, too, this difference in 
range is intensively quantitative, since "above" can 
characterize more things — the entities of a three 
dimensional series, while "tangent to" can char- 
acterize the entities of the class "lines" only. For in 
general, relations differ in range, quantitatively, in 

14 For a concise discussion of "Imageless Thought" from the 
point of view - of Physiological Psychology see Warren, 
"Human Psychology," p. 322 ff. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 131 

respect to the number of classes of entities to which 
they can apply. The social relations show this 
clearly — e. g. the relation of parenthood has a much 
greater range than the relation of teacher to pupil, 
and that of teacher to pupil has a much greater 
range than that of officer to soldier. 

Universals, as well, differ in range within them- 
selves. Goodness has a greater range than gentle- 
ness, or love than jealousy; since many are good 
who are not gentle, and many more love than are 
jealous. 

Furthermore, since, as a rule if not always, 
the awareness content in the case of universals and 
abstract particulars includes a symbolic image, 
sensory or otherwise, the total content will vary in- 
tensively with the different images appropriate to 
the universals, or abstract particulars, with which 
they are associated. 

Thought, however, involves more than mere con- 
tent. It involves process also. Nevertheless, this 
fact presents no special difficulty, since ex hypo- 
thesi a psychokinetic complex is aware of its own 
intensive changes ; and, since the thought psychosis 
can be expressed in terms of psychokinetic intensity, 
it follows that the changes of that psychosis can be 
expressed intensively also. As process the thought 
process consists, like other psychokinetic processes, 
in a series of intensive changes. 



132 CONSCIOUSNESS 

As a process, however, it differs from other pro- 
cesses in being obviously much more complex. It 
involves, essentially, a number of subsidiary pro- 
cesses. It involves the awareness of concepts, fre- 
quently, at any rate, of images, and of different and 
usually progressive series of relational complexes. 
It involves also, as a rule, feeling — the awareness of 
gratification or the opposite during the process. It 
possesses, therefore, both greater amount and 
greater range. Between thought processes them- 
selves, however, their intensive differentiae are prin- 
cipally those of range, due to the specific nature of 
the various contents which the process relates or 
generates. And, finally, of course, thought always 
involves meaning, and meaning is content logically 
determined. 15 

There is, strictly speaking, no specifically constant 
content in emotion. Like feeling it is altogether 
process. It differs from feeling, however, in being 
characterized intensively by both greater amount 
and greater range. It involves thought and image 
as well as perception and organic sensation. All 
these elements, nevertheless, may exist in a complex 
without emotion. It is only when the total aware- 

15 That universals — whatever they may really be — are em- 
pirically essential to the thought process, as part of the 
psychological content, seems incontrovertible. For we can- 
not, after all, think without thinking — i e., conceiving — be the 
nature of the process what it may. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 133 

ness process related to such a complex content is 
strongly rhythmic or arhythmic in character that an 
emotion may be said to occur. To be afraid means 
to perceive an object, to think of its dangerous 
nature, to have unpleasant bodily sensations, and, 
therefore, to be aware of a series of intensive 
changes out of harmony with the totality of normal 
processes in the psychokinetic complex as a whole — 
to be aware of a general arhythmic condition in the 
total awareness. Emotion is therefore psycho- 
kinetically more intense, although at the same time 
vaguer and less specifically precise than feeling. 
But like feeling, such a rhythmic condition may char- 
acterize any process. It needs only to be sufficiently 
pronounced to become a distinct element of aware- 
ness. So, for any "psychic state" we may have 
not only a "feeling tone," but also an "emotional 
coloring". 

The differences between emotions may be ex- 
pressed in intensive terms in the same way as the 
differences between feelings, with certain modifica- 
tions due to their greater complexity. Thus, fear 
and anger may be equally unpleasant — equally 
arhythmic. But in fear the lack of rhythm qualifies 
one set of psychic processes, in anger another. The 
content of the elements whose psychokinetic changes 
are involved differs in the two cases. The thought 
processes are not alike, nor the associated bodily 



134 CONSCIOUSNESS 

sensations; so that the two psychoses differ inten- 
sively, as complexes, with the intensive difference of 
these associated elements. 

The same general considerations also hold good of 
the emotions characterized by an increased ryhthmic 
glow — greater harmony in the total activity of the 
psychokinetic complex. Love and joy, for example, 
may be equally in ryhthmic harmony with the psy- 
chokinetic processes as a whole, but neither the 
thought processes nor the associated bodily sensa- 
tions are the same in both instances.. They differ in 
range, amount, or, under certain conditions, in botbu 
of these. 

The ancient problem of will and activity — 
whether, that is, the will is dynamically efficient, or 
merely an inefficient psychic correlate of physico- 
chemical processes — does not exist for the activist, 
since, as for him all processes, psychic or otherwise, 
are activities, will is an activity also. It is not, 
however, in any sense a " faculty' ' in the antique 
psychological terminology. 

Will is a process which characterizes the psycho- 
kinetic complex as a whole, a certain content (sub- 
complex), and the whole-part relation between them. 
The essential characteristics of will, therefore, are 
due to this relation of the specific content to the con- 
tent included in the total process. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 135 

This specific content is usually called purpose. 
Its principal element is a complex image which is 
anticipatory — that is, an image which is in relation 
to the forward stretching part of the time series; 
and which is characterized by a desirable feeling 
tone — "desirable" meaning, here, desirable as a 
whole and in the long run. In other words, the 
image in this case possesses a complex of periodici- 
ties and a range in harmony with the range and 
periodicities of the psychokinetie complex as a 
whole. The image also must endure, or be capable 
of revival in all essential elements under varying 
psychokinetie conditions, until it is merged in the 
actual experience — must possess, in a high degree, 
duration. 

The will process, then, is characterized intensively 
by a maximum amount and exclusion — it occupies 
the whole complex, the whole "field of attention" ; 
while its imaginal content is characterized by a high 
degree of range and duration. It is differentiated 
intensively, moreover, from other psychoses by the 
nature of the image which is the essential element 
of its content; the "purpose" image, alone, possess- 
ing both the relation to the forward stretching part 
of time series, and the specific feeling tone which 
have been noted. 

For example, a situation which is merely desired 
but not willed, involves also an anticipatory image 



136 CONSCIOUSNESS 

and a pleasant feeling tone. But in that case the feel- 
ing is either only pleasant in itself, or harmoniously 
related to a part only of the total psychokinetic 
complex ; its range does not include the greater 
part of the complex as does the feeling tone of the 
will content. Or again, the feeling tone attached 
to the anticipatory image may be unpleasant in itself, 
but taken in its wider relations to the total complex 
it may be, nevertheless, desirable. I may not wish to 
go to a dentist, but I may will to go there. Psycho- 
kinetically the difference is clear and can be meas- 
ured intensively. 

Well! We have considered! briefly, the chief 
conscious processes, and found that they can all be 
stated in psychokinetic terms and "measured" in- 
tensively. 16 

From the standpoint of Activism, at any rate, their 
"qualities" and differences do not seem to be irre- 
ducible elements, except in so far as they involve 
differential combinations of the elements of intensity 

16 This, of course, does not imply that "content" can be 
wholly stated in psychokinetic terms, since the relations in- 
volved are not psychokinetic, but beings of a different plane. 
The conditions involved in the awareness of relations, how- 
ever, — the conditions of their inclusion in the psychokinetic 
complex which is aware of them — can be stated in terms of 
psychokinetic intensity. A relation is not a complex, of 
psychons. But the awareness of a relation is a complex of 
psychons, at the particular intensity which that relation deter- 
mines. 



CONSCIOUSNESS 137 

itself. And this we have found to be true even in the 
awareness of such things as ideals, relations, and 
values, since they also can be distinguished inten- 
sively. 

"Consciousness", then, is simply the generic term 
for the total activities of a unitary psychokinetic 
complex of a certain kind — of a certain interrelated 
complexity and intensity, — just as "electricity" is a 
generic term for the total activities of unitary psy- 
chokinetic complexes of certain other kinds — of 
certain other interrelated complexities and inten- 
sities. 



CHAPTER 8 

THE META-PSYCHIC PI,ANE. 

This is the plane of ideal entities — numerical 
series, logical propositions, universals, ethical values, 
and the like — beloved of Neo-realists and mathe- 
maticians ; the plane, especially too, of relations "as 
such", 

We have already referred to these beings not in- 
frequently and concluded that, whatever else they 
might or might not be, they were at any rate effi- 
ciencies — Activities in our sense of that term. They 
all are things which "make a difference" somewhere, 
as well as things by "reason of which change exists". 

All of them, also, can be measured intensively by 
applying the three dimensional rule of amount, 
range, and persistence. The relation "above", for 
example, may be "no when and nowhere", but never- 
theless its intensity can be determined. It can be 
intensively differentiated from such a relation as 
"separate from", for its range is less, being re- 
stricted to spacial position, whereas "separate from" 
applies, as well, to the time series, and even to 
things outside of time and space altogether. Or 
again, the relation "brother of" has much less in- 
tensity — is much more restricted in range — than 
such a relation as "ancestor of". For evidently 
"brother of" can make a difference to but a limited 

(138) 



THE META-PSYCHIC PLANE 139 

number of persons or situations, while "ancestor 
of" is an organizing relation for the whole human 
race as well as for the animal world generally. 

Certain of these ideal entities, also, would seem 
to be universals and relations some or all of the 
terms essential for whose activity exist only upon 
the planes below. Electricity — the universal — for 
instance, would be inefficient without its units, the 
electrons, which are entities of the physical plane. 
Nor could the relation "above", in its usual conno- 
tation, possess any intensive range without a ma- 
terial mass, distance from whose center of gravity 
constitutes "aboveness". 

The universals and particular entities of mathe- 
matics on the other hand — series, for example, as a 
universal ; or the numbers of which any particular 
series is composed — seem to exist independently of 
the lower plane activities. 

Again, such a relation as "distance", not from a 
material mass as in "aboveness" but in general, is 
a purely spacial relation between points, and neither 
space nor points depend upon anything beneath the 
meta-psychic plane. 1 

Some "subsistents", therefore, — certain ideal en- 
tities, relations, and relational complexes — would 
appear to exist independently of the lower planes, 

*If there is, also, a "logical distance" (Russell— Principles 
of Mathematics), the elements of such a "distance" would, 
clearly, be all meta-psychic. 



140 THE META-PSYCHIC PLANE 

and to possess on the whole greater range and in- 
tensity. For the efficiency of others the lower plane 
activities seem to be essential conditions. 

Now this whole problem, although so recently 
brought to the fore in philosophic discussion, has 
existed, as we all know, since Plato. For Activism, 
however, these difficulties appear, to some extent at 
any rate, in a modified and more simple form. 

In the first place, since for it all the entities of the 
lower plane, organic or artificial, are ultimately 
complexes of one sort of entity — of psychons — the 
concrete particulars of any universal are necessarily 
always such psychokinetic complexes ; the distinctive 
difference between them depending altogether upon 
the nature of the relations involved. And, since all 
relations and relational complexes exist, or "subsist" 
upon the meta-psychic plane, the relations not only 
between ideal entities but the relations which char- 
acterize the lower plane entities — namely, psychons 
and their complexes — are to be found there also. In 
other words, "psychon", the universal, not other- 
wise than all other universals, has its home on this 
plane. 

The psychon however is peculiar in that, as an 
awareness unit, it is not necessarily conditioned by 
space or time, for an awareness may be altogether 
of meta-psychic activities — universals, relations, or 
ideal entities. The range of its intensity may be 



THE META-PSYCHIC PLANE 141 

exclusively a meta-psychic range. Ideals or rela- 
tions, as well as past or future events and distant 
objects, may compose at any moment almost its 
entire content. It may justly be considered, there- 
fore, to be at home on the meta-psychic plane no 
less than on its own. The difference being that 
upon its own, or any of the lower planes, all com- 
plexes are fundamentally psychokinetic, while upon 
the meta-psychic plane there are many entities 
which are presumably not psychokinetic. 

These other meta-psychic activities, however, so 
long as they remain upon their own plane, are ineffi- 
cient in respect to the existential world. They are 
out of relation to concrete particulars. To achieve 
this efficiency upon the lower planes, to enter into 
relations with concrete particulars, they must depend 
upon psychokinesis. For psychokinesis is the only 
activity among them which can "descend" into the 
planes below. Without it, therefore, there would 
not be any existential world as we actually find it at 
all. Such a spacial relation as "distance," for ex- 
ample, might well exist if there were nothing but 
empty space, but it would possess no effectiveness 
upon the lower planes. Its intensity would be slight, 
its range restricted, without some sort of existential 
world in which its activity could be manifested, and 
in which, through psychokinesis, it could become 
involved. 



142 THE META-PSYCHIC PLANE 

Because we are immediately aware of such meta- 
psychic activities through psychokinetic "inclusion", 
however, has led to the common error that they are 
themselves "mental" in nature. Yet we are immedi- 
ately aware of the activities of the existential world 
in no other way, and no one but the subjective 
idealist doubts their objective validity. For Activ- 
ism, therefore, there is no question about the "ob- 
jectivity" of relations. As awareness content they 
are psychokinetically included, but as facts on their 
own plane they are not only objective, but ap- 
parently extra-mental altogether. In this sense, at 
any rate, Activism is realistic. 

There remain of course many problems as to the 
classification of meta-psychic activities, but in so 
brief an essay these problems could not be even 
adequately summarized. That there is a differential 
stratification among these entities also, is to be 
presumed from our discussion of the classification 
of relations. There are, obviously, wide intensive 
distinctions between them, as we have also noted. 

In regard to the possibility of there being some 
ultimate unit activity upon the meta-psychic plane, 
it would appear that so far-reaching a discrimina- 
tion must lie outside of our present power, if, 
indeed, such an analysis is by any means possible 
at all. It would seem for the present that we must 
take numbers, points, moments, and psychons to be 



THE META-PSYCHIC PLANE 143 

ultimate entities; while the relations of likeness, 
difference, direction (temporal as well as spacial), 
and precedence would seem to be fundamental. 

Whether or not there is, in addition, such an 
ultimate as logical change is a still further question. 
For the purpose of this essay, however, it is hardly 
essential to pursue a rigorous analysis so far. 

There remains the further inquiry whether or not 
they may be some still more fundamental plane of 
activity of which even the meta-psychic activities 
are, in a sense, derivatives; and whether, if such be 
the case, some form of psychokinesis may not pene- 
trate even beyond so remote a boundary also. The 
Eastern thought, as we know, has, for ages, main- 
tained the actuality of such transcendental regions, 
and that their activities may be truly apprehended 
in "sammadhi", or the supernormal mystic experi- 
ence. 

These lofty mountain peaks, nevertheless, lie quite 
beyond our ordinary vision, although it were an 
unwise man who should presume to assert dog- 
matically that the glimmer of their eternal snows 
may not, from time to time, light up for some brief 
moment our normally circumscribed horizon. How- 
ever all this may be, for the activist at any rate 
meta-psychic beings, whatever their exact status, in 
so far as they can be at all, are activities, and as 
such capable of intensive differentiation. 



CHAPTER 9 

ACTIVISM AND THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF 
PHILOSOPHY 

It is evident that, for the activist, many of the 
historic philosophic problems will take on a dif- 
ferent complexion from their long accustomed hue. 

Some of them, from his point of view, will be 
lengthened or foreshortened, and some of them will 
cease to exist altogether. 

In so brief an essay, however, intended in great 
measure to be suggestive merely, there can be no 
pretense of even an adequate survey, much less an 
exhaustive analysis, of the many questions which 
have monopolized the attention of philosophy at 
different times during its long history. To indicate 
certain aspects upon which the activistic attitude 
may have some special bearing is all that can be 
attempted here. 

Among the traditional problems the first, and per- 
haps the most ancient, bequeathed to us moderns 
already worn and dusty — yet with something of the 
glamour still about it of the sunlit temples of Egypt, 
and India, and Greece* — is that of the "One and the 
Many." 

The problem has taken many different forms. 
With Plato and Aristotle, it was the problem of 
universals and particulars. With Spinoza, it was 

(144) 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 145 

the problem of substance and attributes. With 
Hegel, it was the problem of system — of how a rela- 
tion relates. 

It is difficult, however, to fasten fairly either of 
the catchwords "monist" or "pluralist" upon the 
activist. Since for him every conceivable thing is 
an activitity of some sort — since activity is the 
universal in which all entities participate — he may 
be labeled "monist", especially as the attempt is 
seriously made to discriminate between activities in 
quantitative terms of activity itself. On the other 
hand there would seem to be for him certain irre- 
ducible differentiae between activities due, para- 
doxically enough, to the fact of their being activi- 
ties at all. 

For there seems to a good deal of inherent vague- 
ness in our ideas of unity. Anything can be "one" 
in so many different ways. A unitary complex, for 
example, is "one" in its relations to other similar 
entities on its own plane. Yet it is "many" in its 
relation to the entities of the plane above. Rela- 
tions, again, and their complexes seem funda- 
mentally disparate — as difference, identity, or the 
temporal and spatial relations. Even quantitative 
differences are different, although, it may be, involv- 
ing units of the same kind. One and one are two, 
and one and one and one are three; but two and 
three are forever and essentially separate. 



146 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

The world, as we can ever apprehend it, then, 
seems to be always many, although it would appear 
to be likewise one — one, as activity, the universal; 
many, as particular activities intensively distinct. 

Whether the universe as a whole is, in some trans- 
cendental fashion, a unitary complex also, seems in 
the end to be largely a matter of philosophic taste. 
If it gives any deep satisfaction to believe so, there 
exists no< conclusive evidence to the contrary. Ac- 
tivism, as such, has nothing to exact about this 
matter. For Activism the world is "one" as activity, 
only as for Physical Science it is "one" as a mani- 
festation of energy. 

In regard to the more concrete problem of Cos- 
mology, Activism, as we have seen, has something 
quite definite to say. A cosmos, whether essentially 
a universe or a "pluriverse", whether fundamentally 
one or many (and isn't it from: the very nature of 
the case necessarily both?) presents at any rate a 
number of different questions. As full of many 
problems it is pluralistic, however monistic the solu- 
tion of them may be. For Monism, of course, does 
not deny the "many", but only the character of the 
many as ultimately discrete. It insists that all 
things must be essentially of the same kind (as, for 
example, "spirits"), and finally comprised, in some 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 147 

way, in an embracing unity (as an absolute Spirit 
or Self). 

Now evidently Activism is not monistic in this 
sense. The cosmological problem, for Activism, 
is not "in what way are all activities one" ; but 
rather, "in what way are activities many — how 
can they be differentiated as activities in terms of 
intensity and its elements"? Its principal aim is 
empirical distinction. Things for it are all of a kind 
because they can all be distinguished according to one 
formula. Their oneness grows out of their many- 
ness. For although it considers everything to be ac- 
tivity, activities are intensively discriminate— "That 
by reason of which change exists" may be mysti- 
cally, — and perhaps really — one, but the changes 
which exist thereby are evidently many. 

Of course, however, it is not intended here to 
indicate any contrast between "appearance" and 
"reality." Activities are entirely real on whatever 
plane they may occur. Like the stars they differ 
from one another in glory, but not in being. The ac- 
tivist is therefore a realist rather than an idealist, 
yet, in a way, an idealist also, in that he holds that 
awareness — psychokinesis — is the stuff of which 
the existential part of the world is made. He has 
moreover, as we have seen, a pretty definite hy- 
pothesis as to what this psychokinesis is, and how 
it is organized to form the basic units of the dif- 



148 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OP PHILOSOPHY 

f erent existential planes. Yet, since the whole essay, 
so far, has been concerned with just these questions 
as to the essential structure of the universe, it is 
unnecessary to discuss them further here. How far 
Activism may have solved them, at least to its own 
satisfaction, is for him who runs to read. 

Specifically, however, there are many questions 
into which the Activist hypothesis cuts deeply — as 
for example the Mind-Body problem. Granting 
the activist hypothesis, this problem does not pre- 
sent the difficulties with which it bristles upon 
other theories. It is almost entirely a problem of 
non-additive, and possibly non-causal, relations — 
the relations between the unitary complexes of the 
different planes. For if psychons are the basic units 
of the physical world, legitimate questions can be 
concerned only with differences between aware- 
nesses, not with a difference between awareness and 
some other existential entity. 

The mind-body problem, therefore, reduces itself 
to the question— what are the relations between the 
specific psychokinetic unitary complex called body 
and the specific psychokinetic complex called mind ? 
Are they essentially different from the relations 
found between other sorts of psychokinetic com- 
plexes, or are they merely a special instance of the 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 149 

interrelationship of psychokinetic complexes in gen- 
eral? 

Obviously for the activist the last description is 
the correct one. Whatever is peculiar to the mind- 
body relation is due merely to the special character 
of the complexes involved. 

For Activism, then, the mind-body problem is the 
specific problem concerning the nature of the rela- 
tions between the two psychokinetic complexes 
which constitute, respectively, the body and the 
mind. What some of these relations might be has 
been indicated in the chapter on Consciousness. 

There remain, however, the questions — are the 
body and the mind quantitatively (in amount) iden- 
tical; are they entirely separate psychokinetic com- 
plexes merely interrelated; or does the body, in 
some way, and if so in what way, include the mind 
as a subcomplex, or vice versa? 

Now as far as the characteristic doctrines of Ac- 
tivism are concerned any one of these various con- 
ditions might be true. As a complex of psychons 
the body might be characterized by a double order, 
the order of atoms, molecules, cells, and the rest of 
the physical organic structure; as well as a purely 
psychokinetic order not imbedded in the physical 
order. 



150 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Or possibly this double order might characterize 
only a part of the physical organism, the nervous 
system, brain, or cerebral cortex. 

On the other hand that complex of psychons 
which we call mind might be altogether disparate 
from the physical organism with which it is re- 
lated ; the relations between the two being possibly 
causal, or merely correlations — relations of non- 
causal efficiency. There is, also, a further possi- 
bility — namely that the mind is neither quantitatively 
identical with the whole physical body or any part 
of it, nor yet altogether separate from it, but that, 
on the contrary, the physical body, either as a whole 
or in part, is a sub-complex included in the larger 
complex of an individual mind. 

No one of these possible relationships, however, 
would seem to follow as a necessary deduction from 
the postulates of Activism. On the contrary, any 
one of them might prove to be the actual mind-body 
relation. We do not know whether it will ever be 
possible to solve this problem by experimental evi- 
dence or the discovery of new facts; but, whether 
practically capable of solution or not, the problem is, 
for Activism at any rate, an empirical problem. 
The Activist hypothesis does not in any way depend 
upon its solution. It has a place for the facts what- 
ever they may be. 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 151 

This much however can be said. The essential 
relations between body and mind must be, in any 
event, organizing relations. And this would be 
equally true whether the mind is organized by, or 
through, the body; the body by, or through, the 
mind ; or whether each is partially, but not wholly, 
organized by the other. 

Concretely this is evident in such a case as that 
of pain. If pain is always superinduced by a 
physical lesion, the body would be always the 
medium through which the psychic pain situation 
were organized. If, on the contrary, pain could 
be superinduced without physical lesion, if the 
thalamic pain centers in the body could function as 
the result of a purely mental stimulus (as for ex- 
ample a "telepathic" suggestion), the mind would 
be the medium. In either case, however, the rela- 
tions involved would be organizing relations. But 
beyond this it would seem impossible in our present 
state of knowledge to proceed. 

The mind-body situation, irrespective of the solu- 
tion of the problems involved in it, has nevertheless 
an immediate bearing upon the question as to why a 
psychokinetic complex, A, is aware of another com- 
plex C, or of a certain relation, X, rather than of 
complexes D, E, and F, or of relations W, Y, and Z. 

But to this problem, also, the answer is an em- 
pirical answer. For, as a familiar fact of experi- 



152 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

ence, we find minds, whatever their real nature, re- 
lated to bodies, whatever the relations between them 
may be, in such a way that sense data evidently, and 
all other awareness data presumably, "get into" the 
mind through the medium of bodily stimuli. 

Clearly, therefore, what the psychokinetic complex 
"mind" is aware of is conditioned by the stimuli that 
the body to which it is related receives. Similarly 
the psychokinetic complex which is electron A is 
aware of electron B, and not electrons C, D, or E, 
when changes in A's motion are caused by B. The 
respective modus operandi in the two cases has been 
examined at some length in Chapter 7 and Chapter 
6. In either case the situation which conditions 
the physical unitary complex is the selective agent. 

The Epistomological problem, in some form, has 
been at the fore in philosophical discussion for the 
past century and a half. 

It has taken on this character of a fundamentally 
important problem because no philosopher can pre- 
tend to consider the ultimate nature of objects in 
general without, either explicitly or tacitly, assuming 
some position in regard to the character of the rela- 
tionship between himself and the objects which he 
has under consideration — e. g. the relation between 
the knower and the object known. 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 153 

It is evident, moreover, that the conditions in- 
volved in this relation between knower and object 
known is a special case of the essential conditions 
involved in the relationship of any objects or terms. 
What, then, is implied in the relational situation? 
Is the character or existence of terms dependent, 
ipso facto, upon the character or existence of the 
relations which obtain between them? Or are 
neither the character nor existence of terms in rela- 
tion necessarily dependent upon the fact of their 
relationship? This is the question in a nut-shell. 

Briefly, there are three types of solution to this 
problem. The eighteenth century thinkers — Locke, 
Berkeley, Hume, Kant — who were inclined to con- 
sider all relations as essentially causal in character — 
held that related objects were necessarily con- 
ditioned by the relations which obtained between 
them. Particularly was it urged that all objects 
which could be perceived by the senses, since their 
entire existence as sense objects depended upon the 
relation between object and perceiver, were from 
the very nature of the situation altogether depend- 
ent upon the awareness relation — that their esse was 
percipi. For the earlier Subjective Idealism, there- 
fore, consciousness was constitutive. 

The second type of solution is that offered by 
Objective Idealism exemplified in such philosophers 
as Fichte, Hegel, Caird, Bradley, Royce. This later 



154 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Idealism still holds that terms in relation are, in con- 
sequence of that fact, different from what they 
would be were the relation not there. It still holds, 
also, that the awareness relation is essentially con- 
stitutive. To get away from the obvious difficul- 
ties and limitations of a purely Subjective Idealism, 
however, it posits a universal or absolute conscious- 
ness, in which are contained ("as appearances", or 
at any rate, subordinate realities) both terms and 
relations. For it, therefore, consciousness is still 
constitutive, but the world is "objective" to the 
merely private perceiver because the constituting is 
done by an Absolute Being to whose universal 
awareness is due the existence of all objects and 
finite perceivers. 1 

The third type of solution is advanced by the 
Realists, and in its latest, most logical form by the 
New Realists. Needless to say, also, this is the view 
generally held by the scientists and the unphilosoph- 
ical portion of humanity. This view was definitely, 
although briefly, stated to be the view held by Activ- 
ism, as an essentially realistic system (Chapter I). 
In order to justify the faith that is in us, however, it 
is well to state the matter here somewhat more in 
detail. 

1 See Royce "The World and the Individual". Vol. I. Lec- 
ture III ft. 









THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 155 

If we call two objects, or terms, A and B, and the 
1 elation between them R ; Activism holds ( I ) that R 
does not necessarily make any difference to A or B, 
except the mere fact of relationship; (2) that R, 
however, does make a difference to the complex 
A-R-B, since, although not constitutive of A or B, 
it is constitutive of the complex; and (3) that al- 
though R, as such, does not necessarily make any 
difference to A or B, it may make a difference, if in 
any situation it is logically prior to other relational 
conditions in the situation by which the situation, as 
a whole, makes a difference to the objects included 
in it. 

Thus (1) if A and B are friends, that fact does 
not make a difference to A and B as objects. They 
are just as much animals, or men, or citizens, 
whether they are friends or not. The relation here 
is constitutive of friendship only. Otherwise the 
objects which it relates are quite independent. (2) 
The relation of friendship, however, does make a 
difference to A and B as a complex of two friends 
acting, in any way, in common. (3) But the friend- 
ship relation may make a vital difference to A or B, 
or both, since A and B might be in some situation 
where the safety, or even the existence, of one or 
both, might depend upon the fact of their friend- 
ship. 



156 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Again, (i) time and space, as manifolds of 
moments and points, are mutually independent, 
whether or not the relational complex of physical 
motion obtains between them or not. 2 On the other 
hand, (2) motion is altogether dependent upon its 
relations to points and moments, or a complex de- 
pendent upon its organizing relations; or such 
a term as a child dependent upon the relations — 
"ancestor of" and organic "similarity". (3) Cases 
of partial independence are acceleration and motion, 
the existence of acceleration depending upon the 
relational complex of motion but not vice versa ; or 
brotherhood, when not only the existence of A and 
B as brothers, but also their existence as physical 
organisms at all are dependent upon their relation- 
ship to a common ancestor. 3 

There is, thus, a logical hierarchy of relations; in 
general the logically prior relations being constitu- 
tive, and the logically subsequent relations not con- 
stitutive. 

Now the "awareness relation" is for the Activist, 
ex hypothesi, a relation of psychokinetic inclusion. 

2 According to the new Relational Physics this would be true 
in a limited mechanical sense only, the three dimensions of 
space, and time, being considered as a single four-dimensional 
manifold. See appendix. 

a For a discussion of independence, and the independence 
test see Huntington's "Continuum," or Young's "Concept of 
Algebra and Geometry. ,, 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 157 

It may, therefore, be present or not in any given 
case. Ipso facto, it is constitutive only of the fact 
of inclusion, although it may make a difference to 
the terms which it relates in certain situations, just 
as may any other relation. Since however relations 
are activities, any relation always makes a difference 
somewhere, although it does not make a difference 
everywhere. Where it makes a difference, and the 
sort of difference it makes depends upon its in- 
tensity, especially the intensive element of range. 

But the relation of psychokinetic inclusion is not 
a relation of fixed intensity. Its intensity depends 
primarily upon the including psychokinetic complex. 
For an awareness, from the activist's point of view, 
is not a relation but an entity. Awareness, then, is 
ubiquitous, not because the "awareness relation'' 
is characteristic of all experience, but because all 
existential entities are psychons, or psychokinetic 
complexes. The existence of the psychon as an in- 
dependent entity does not depend upon the "aware- 
ness relation" between some other entity and it — 
its inclusion by some other psychokinetic complex. 
Its existence depends, rather, upon the fact that it is 
an awareness unit itself. 

It is not "constituted" by an "awareness relation" 
any more than an electron is "constituted" by an 
"electrical relation". Nor are psychokinetic com- 
plexes necessarily constituted by being included 



158 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

in other psychokinetic complexes — by becoming 
awareness objects. 

Activism maintains, therefore, that neither 
entities, nor relations "out there", are in any way 
determined as to their existence by being thus 
included in the awareness complex which perceives 
them; since they, also, are independent activities 
in their own right. For psychokinetic inclusion is 
constitutive of the perceiving only, not of the per- 
ceiver, nor of the object perceived. 

Activism maintains, also, as we have seen, that 
objects do not, somehow, have to be "gotten over" 
into consciousness. As fundamentally awareness 
complexes they are already there. 

But this does not answer the obvious question 
how does awareness complex A "get into" aware- 
ness complex B as part of awareness B's content? 
Yet, here again, an attempt at a solution has been 
made. The specific periodicity which is "blue ,, is 
both in the "object" out there, and in my "mind" 
which is here. The "aboveness" in a complex oi 
objects, out there, is also present, "internally", as 
a relation, in the perceiving psychokinetic complex. 
Literally, therefore, in perception, things are both 
out there, and in my mind also, as content. All this 
has been discussed, at some length, in the chapter 
on Consciousness. 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 159 

In the chapter on Consciousness, also, it was 
pointed out how relations, relational complexes, and 
ideals, once "inside", are known; and how content 
can be expressed in terms of psychokinetic intensity. 
In the case of sense perception, moreover, it was 
indicated specifically how the spatial relations "got 
in". 

Here, then, it may be said that relations in 
general get in no otherwise. They come in with 
the entities which are their terms. Where, for 
example, blue and red come in together, the same 
relation between their respective periodicities is 
then inside as well as outside. And that relation of 
difference, since it also has a certain intensity of its 
own, can exist, qua intensity, as an awareness datum 
— be tagged with a verbal image, and considered 
separately as a content object. Being of the same 
intensity as the difference outside, that difference is 
always just that difference whether inside or out. 
It can thus be hitched up with any appropriate 
terms, or be an object of awareness in itself, with- 
out any specific terms at all. Relations, then, "come 
in" with their terms, and once in, can become sepa- 
rate awareness objects. 

The same is true of ideal entities. They get in 
w T ith concrete particulars — sense data. A geometric 
triangle gets in, in the first place, as a concrete tri- 
angle drawn on paper — certain intensities of color, 



160 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

size, and form. Once in, the spacial-relation com- 
plex alone, without the color and size, can remain 
as a separate awareness datum by reason of its 
own specific intensity just as any other relation or 
relational complex can. The fact that such an ideal 
entity is not "out there" in the material world, but 
is "out there" on the ideal plane makes no differ- 
ence. As an activity with a certain characteristic 
intensity it is just the same. But to "get it in" you 
have, literally, first to get it into* your head, then in 
your mind — which shows again the accuracy and 
felicity of common sense description. 

"Subsistents" in general, then, can be gotten into 
the psychokinetic complex without any great diffi- 
culty. They are obliged, however, to ride in upon 
the backs of concrete particulars — to be smuggled 
in with the sense objects with which, at the moment, 
they may be associated. 

In regard to the problem of a priori knowledge, 
Activism, as such, may be considered to throw no 
especial illumination, excepting, in so far as funda- 
mentally realistic, it holds that whatever "gets into" 
the awareness complex is necessarily just what it is. 
The awareness object that is apprehended is the 
same whether inside or out. And, of course, this is 
just as true of the awareness of meta-psychic enti- 
ties or relations as of the immediate objects of sense 
perception. Meta-psychic entities are perceived "as 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 161 

such". The "aprioriness" lies in the nature of the 
awareness object, not in the awareness of it. It is 
logical, or cosmological, not psychical. If that ob- 
ject is, for example, a simple relation (as differ- 
ence) ; or a simple sensation (as blue) ; it seems 
evident that, if it is perceived at all, it must be per- 
ceived as just what it is and nothing else. 

Possibly for the activist, the terms "immediate" 
and "derivative" would fit the facts better than "a 
priori" and "experimental". For, in a way, the 
only kind of knowledge that is possible at all, for 
him, is a priori — the ambiguity lies wholly in the 
object. For example, suppose x to be above y. 
Now, either, x and y are of such a sort that x always 
is above y, in which case they can "get into" aware- 
ness in no other way; or x may, or may not, be 
above y, according to circumstances, in which case 
they must "get in" with the circumstances attached. 
In either event x and y and the relation "above", or 
its absence, must get in as they really are, and in 
neither event is there any awareness of them until 
they "get in". 

In both events the "knowledge" is a priori and 
experiential — a priori in the sense that the entities 
and relations in question are just what they are 
perceived to be, experiential as to whether they 
are always, or otherwise, the same as they are 
"known" in any particular presentation. 



162 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

When anything, whether simple or complex, in or 
out of awareness, is of such a kind as to be always 
and everywhere the same, as e. g., the relation 
"above", the knowledge of it may be said to be im- 
mediate or a priori, if not, derivative or experi- 
ential. There can be no question, therefore, for 
the activist as to the validity of presentative knowl- 
edge, since from the very nature of the case the 
same "things" are both inside and outside. If 
psychon A is aware of psychon B, it is, literally, B 
which is psychokinetically included in A. If com- 
plex X is aware of periodicity (relational complex) 
Z it is, literally, Z that is included. 4 

But if this is so, what shall the activist say about 
the question of Error ? 

4 Due to the peculiar doctrine of Activism that knowledge is 
essentially psychokinetic inclusion, this whole question assumes 
a somewhat unfamiliar form. 

Certain fundamental relations — as likeness, difference, and 
the like — are necessarily involved in any highly organized 
psychokinetic complex. 

Such fundamental relations, therefore, are prerequisite to 
any activity — such e. g. as discriminative perception — on the 
part of that complex. 

They do not, however, need to be "transcendentally deduced" 
like the Kantian Categories; for, as organizing relations, they 
are imbedded in the very inception of the complex itself. 

In this sense, but in this sense only, are such "forms of 
thought" a priori. 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 163 

The problem is so intricate and full of difficulties 
that only the briefest survey can be attempted. It 
may be said, nevertheless, that in the main the posi- 
tion of Activism would be here also, a realistic 
position. 

There are, however, two separate problems con- 
tained in this general question which philosophers, 
not infrequently, have failed to distinguish with 
sufficient clearness. One is the problem of truth 
and falsehood, the other the problem, strictly speak- 
ing, of error. 

Now since Activism not only holds, with Realism, 
that all facts involve or imply propositions, but also 
holds, in addition, that propositions themselves are 
efficient activities ; it follows that not only facts, but 
the propositions which are implicated in those facts, 
are "objective" beings, which may subsist without 
being "thought of" — without inclusion in an aware- 
ness complex. 

But it is evident that there are false as well as true 
propositions-*-a false proposition being a proposi- 
tion in which the relation between its terms is a 
relation which is contradictory to the relation by 
which those terms are constituted members of the 
class to which they belong. 

Thus 2 < (is less than) 5 is a true proposition, 
as well as an actual fact. But 2 > (is greater than) 
5 is a false proposition, because it contradicts the 



164 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

relation by which the series of cardinal numbers is 
constituted — namely the fact th$t in such a serial 
order the preceding- number (2) is always less than 
any succeeding numbers (as 5). It is false for that 
system upon which its specific organization depends. 
For although, there might be conceivably a system 
in which 2 > 5 was true, that system would not be 
the system of numbers as we know it. 

Yet here both the terms and the relation are "true" 
enough, the falsehood lies in the total relational 
situation. The Activist maintains, however, that 
such false propositions not only are, but are activi- 
ties which may be of great and pernicious intensity. 
Certainly common experience is full enough of ex- 
amples of the efficiency of falsehoods. The fact 
that a falsehood is "unreal", possesses no status in 
the existential world, is beside the point ; for meta- 
psychic beings generally are not existential, yet are 
none the less efficient activities. For Activism, 
therefore, as for Realism, "false" and "true" are 
objective characteristics. 

In contradistinction to "false", however, error 
involves the element of awareness. A false propo- 
sition, as well as a true fact, might be, without hav- 
ing been discovered. But it is difficult to see how a 
mistake can occur without implying a mistaken The 
"error" arises when a false proposition as an inde- 
pendent awareness object is included in a psycho- 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 105 

kinetic complex. 5 False and true apply to facts 
irrespective of an awareness of them. Error is 
always error of judgment. It depends upon the 
way in which facts are "taken". 

We have spoken of "things" being, at once, both 
outside and inside the psychokinetic complex — as 
"objective" data and conscious content. It is evi- 
dent, however, that any specific thing — some- 
thing, for example, undiscovered by any other 
awareness — might be altogether outside of any other 
psychokinetic complex. 

It is also true that any specific thing may be 
inside a given complex as a sub-complex, as the 
specific intensity which that particular thing is, 
without being at the moment anywhere else. Images 
are familiar cases in point, notably dream images. 
The difference, however, is between the relative in- 
tensities of that which is inside only, and that which 
is outside as well. 

A man whom we see in a dream is a man, but he is 
only a man as we see him. The "real" man has a 
whole host of activities inside him which we do not 
see, but only infer; whereas the dream man, pre- 
sumably, does not possess any of these invisible 

5 Of course a false proposition may be included as a part of 
a true proposition — be recognized as false, as in the proposi- 
tion "2 > 5 is false". This false proposition, however, would 
not be an independent object but merely an element in the 
containing proposition. 



166 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

activities at all. We see all that there is of him. 
He is a mere shell of a man, but a man for all that. 
He can walk, and act, and even talk, but the stuff in 
him is not his own. It does not inhere in his own 
psychokinetic complex. It is pumped into him from 
the stores of the dreamer's complex. If the dream 
is vivid enough, however, he is just the same sort 
of man that we see walking along the street in 
broad daylight — the same sort of intensive complex 
of periodicities and space relations exists in the 
perceiver in the one case as in the other. Yet in 
the one case that which has given rise to his exist- 
ence is an internal stimulus, in the other case an 
external stimulus. 6 The illusion consists altogether 
in the further inferences — the allied associational 
content — -which we make in regard to this partic- 
ular man. Because we can see him we judge, from 
long habit, that he can think, push us, argue with 
us, and what not — that he possesses his own inde- 
pendent inside, when as a fact he does not possess 
any inside at all. He is all outside. His esse is all 
percipi. 7 
And, of course, we become aware of this at once as 

6 How the dream image arises is largely a matter for the 
physiological psychologist to explain — if he can. Its genesis 
is irrelevant for us here. 

T This, of course, would not be true of objects perceived in 
"veridical" dreams, if such dreams should prove to be facts. 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 167 

soon as he turns into an elephant, or does some other 
impossible thing which fails to fit in with the 
familiar associative content. 

Error, therefore, is always a question of mean- 
ing — of psychological content. It is a relational 
affair altogether. If the same relations exist be- 
tween the entities in the total content as exist be- 
between the same entities outside of the content the 
content is "true". If they do not, there is error. 

// a dream man could possess all the relations to 
his environment which a man outside possesses — all 
the activities, including, of course, permanence — then 
that dream man woidd be just as real a man in every 
conceivable sense. That he does not possess these 
multifarious qualities is just what constitutes him 
a dream man only. The snake which the alcoholic 
patient sees is a snake. It is not "real" because it 
can neither bite nor lay eggs, does not possess a real 
snake's manifold capacities; not merely because no 
one else can see it. If a certain kind of clairvoy- 
ance were true, another person possessed of this 
power could see it also. Here again it is all a matter 
of associated content. The poor sufferer sees a 
snake and therefore concludes that it is "real" — 
exists outside as well as inside of his own psycho- 
kinetic complex. Here, at any rate, as Emerson said 
"Truth is the conformity of thought with things". 
The "thing" that is seen in hallucination is exactly 



168 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

similar to the "thing" seen normally. What is 
thought about it makes all the difference. 

Error, then, is always in some way error of judg- 
ment, and it occurs when the relational complex as- 
sociated in content with any awareness object is not 
the same as the relational complex associated with 
that object without, as well as within, that particular 
awareness center. 

Yet none of this, it may be well urged, meets the 
philosophic question — what after all is Awareness? 

For Activism, of course, it is an activity, and we 
have attempted to show how to it, also, the general 
determinations of intensity may be applied. We 
have furthermore defined its fundamental units, the 
psychons, as entities, and therefore any specific 
awarenesses which take place in actual experience as 
an entity-relation complex. 

But what sort of an activity is a psychon, and how 
does it, or its complexes, differ from other activ- 
ities? Briefly, Activism would answer the question 
in this way. Awareness is an activity to which 
nothing except that which is included within itself 
can make any difference. And not only is this true, 
but it is true of awareness only. It marks it off 
definitely from activities of any other kind. 

It is obviously not true of any plane below the 
psychokinetic plane, for although here too any uni- 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 169 

tary complex, such as a physical organism or 
material object, may have a difference made to it by 
the presence or absence of activities within it, a 
difference can be also made by many sorts of activity 
altogether outside of its periphery. 

It is equally not true of the meta-psychic plane, 
for such things as relations, universals, ideals, or 
mathematical series are, presumably, just what they 
are once for all There, one may have different 
relations, ideal entity complexes, and the rest of it, 
but they cannot be changed by including in them 
additional factors. They are supposed to exist 
above the world of change altogether. They are 
activities because by reason of them changes take 
place, but they themselves are changeless. 

Awareness, then, is sui generis in this respect. 
Nothing can change it except that which it includes. 
There may be many sorts of activity which can 
determine the conditions of inclusion, but the aware- 
ness itself is unaffected until that inclusion occurs. 
Or, again, the relations of an awareness complex to 
the rest of the world outside may be various and 
many, but the one essential relation to any external 
activity by which that activity becomes an awareness 
object is inclusion within the complex itself. How 
this may be so has already been pointed out in the 
chapter on Consciousness. 



170 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

But, it may be asked, even supposing any of these 
external activities to be thus gotten inside of the 
awareness complex, are they not then, also, still 
objects of awareness as psychic content, and does 
not the subject-object relation still obtain as a special 
kind of relation different from all others? 

The answer to this objection is that what we 
usually designate as the subject-object relation is 
really, in the case of awareness, nothing but the 
whole-part relation. Ex hypothesi, for the activist, 
an awareness complex is aware of its own intensive 
condition and changes; but, in this case, awareness 
of condition or change is itself change or condition 
of awareness. There is no special change-object re- 
lation between change, an sich, and the object in 
which change occurs. The relation here is between 
the object and the time series. And, of course, in 
awareness changes, too, there is the relation between 
awareness content and the time series; so that the 
content contains this relation as an essential element. 
The awareness, then, is of this relation also. But 
awareness of a relation of any sort is merely the 
inclusion of this relation in the awareness complex 
itself. How a relation may "get in" has already 
been pointed out. 

Here again the literal accuracy of the vulgar ex- 
pression shows itself. We say "a change takes place 
in a thing." Well; in this case a change takes place 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 171 

in an awareness. There is no "change-object" rela- 
tion between the change and the thing. There are, 
to be sure, all sorts of relations between the thing 
and what it does, between structure and function, 
but those are obviously not change-object relations. 
They are describable in their own various terms. 

It is of the essence of psychokinetic complexes, as 
Activism apprehends them, to be aware of their own 
intensive changes, of their own content, because, as 
we have pointed out, from the very nature of the 
case awareness of change is always change of aware- 
ness. The immediate object of consciousness here 
is simply a part of the consciousness itself. The 
relation is a whole-part relation. Consciousness 
cannot, therefore, be defined as, or even involve, a 
relation between subject and object. For there is 
no specific "subject-object" relation. 

Recent philosophical discussion has been much 
concerned over the question of Values. In general 
the contrast has been drawn between a world of 
causal mechanism and "a realm of ends" — pur- 
poses, ideals — in some sort a spiritual world, over 
and above, or set off against, the w r orld of concrete 
realities. A good deal of all this, although, in 
the main, a healthy reaction against certain 
over-emphasized tendencies, appears nevertheless 
vaguely unsatisfying and over literary. The whole 



172 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

subject, however, has been so much in the philo- 
sophic mind of late that at least a 'brief word should 
be said about it here. 

We have already indicated how values and 
"ends", since they are activities, are efficient realities. 
They need not be, however, "spiritual" activities, 
for a telelogical order might well characterize even a 
purely "naturalistic" universe. 8 For the activist, 
moreover, they would be taken rather in the Platonic 
fashion, as independent meta-psychic beings logically 
prior to the activities of the lower planes. 

Thus an aesthetic ideal — the ideal of beauty, for 
example — would not depend upon, or be created by, 
thought or awareness. As Emerson says, "The 
world is not painted- or adorned, but Beauty is the 
creator of the universe." Beauty, like truth (as 
we have just seen) is characteristic of the "external 
order". The relations involved in it are not essen- 
tially dependent upon the relations obtaining upon 
the psychokinetic plane. The ethical ideal, especially, 
is an activity of high intensity — of great range. And 
it, also, like truth and beauty, although its signifi- 
cance in the existential world may hinge upon the 
presence there of a society of moral individuals, is 
not dependent upon any lower order for its own 
being. 

8 See ''The Order of Nature". Lawrence J. Henderson. 
1917. Harvard University Press. 



THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 173 

Values, then, for Activism, are independent ac- 
tivities, as efficient and "objective" in their own 
way and according to their respective intensities as 
any other facts. 

Closely connected with the problem of values, 
especially at this time of wide-spread suffering 
and personal sacrifice, is the specific question of 
Personal Survival. 

Disguise our interest as we may, pragmatically 
this question is a vital one, and cuts deep in 
many directions. No philosophy, however scorn- 
ful, can afford to ignore it altogether. Yet the 
question is after all an empirical question, and a 
single undeniable fact w x ould upset at once all our 
fine-spun theories. 

Perhaps, therefore, the most which can be ex- 
pected from any philosophy is a statement as to 
whether or not it has a reasonable place for such a 
fact in its system, were such a fact proved to exist; 
and possibly, also, whether or not on the whole the 
trend of its cosmology tends towards the general 
assumption of such a fact's existence. 

Now, indubitably, Activism has a place for per- 
sonal survival. For a psychokinetic unitary com- 
plex could perfectly well exist in possession of its 
various activities whether or not it also formed, or 



174 THE HISTORIC PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

were in correlation with, an electronic or atomic 
complex upon the planes below. 

Such an awareness complex would, of course, 
presumably be cut off (although even this does 
not necessarily follow) from the characteristic 
activities of the lower planes; but it would not be 
cut off from relations to the activities of its own 
plane or the planes above. Its total activity — its 
life — might conceivably be as full, or fuller than 
in that form in which we usually know it here. As 
an awareness complex it could conceivably still be 
in relation to other awareness complexes — dis- 
carnate, or possibly under peculiar conditions, incar- 
nate — as well as be entirely aware of its own inten- 
sive changes. 

But whether or not such conscious entities as a 
matter of fact exist, detached from the physical 
entities with which they are normally known to us 
as associated, is a question the decision of which 
rests upon empirical evidence independent of philo- 
sophic inquiry. 



CHAPTER 10 

CONCLUSION 

At the end, here, of this slight and tentative essay 
it is perhaps well to gather up the threads, and to 
take a final brief survey of the philosophic garment 
which we have tried to weave. 

According to the hypothesis which has been de- 
veloped everything is considered as an activity — a 
"that" by reason of which difference is made, this 
difference being, in the world of process, nearly 
always some kind of a change. 

According to our hypothesis also, activity, al- 
though a unifying conception universally applicable, 
is known to us principally, not in its universal form, 
but in specific instances, the specificity of which can 
be expressed by means of a principle of determina- 
tion which we have called intensity. And we have 
defined intensity, in a somewhat technical way, as a 
complex of elements again themselves specified as 
amount, range, persistence and their derivative — 
exclusion ; amount being quantitative, the greater or 
less activity involved in any given instance; range 
the number of other activities in respect to which 
any given activity is efficient — ior which it is "that 
by reason of which" changes in them exist; exclu- 
sion the extent to which the given activity is inde- 
pendent, is not "influenced'' by other activities ; and 

(175) 



176 CONCLUSION 

persistence the duration of a given activity, usually 
as a specific unitary complex. 

Fundamentally these elements of intensity are re- 
lational, and might be further defined as the quanti- 
tative relations of a given activity to its own parts 
(amount), to other activities (range), the relations 
of other activities to it (exclusion), and to the time 
series (persistence). 

All this of course rest upon the assumption of a 
real world of real activities, and Activism is there- 
fore to this extent essentially realistic. It assumes 
the "objective" validity and "real" being of entities 
and relations, as well as the fundamental relational 
complexes of space, time, number, and change. 

It assumes, moreover, a minimum entity in the 
existential world called a psychon — the unit of 
awareness. And it posits for this psychon, as an 
activity — a ground for change — an efficiency not 
confined to the merely passive capacity for receiving 
the minimum of psychic impression, but also an 
efficiency capable of being "that by reason of which 
change exists" in other psychons. To express, 
therefore, this "dynamic" element of awareness we 
have called the characteristic activity of the psychon 
psychokinesis. 

This hypothesis, however, does not make knowl- 
edge essentially constitutive in the epistemological 
sense, for the existence of a psychon (or its com- 



CONCLUSION 177 

plexes) is independent of its relations to other 
psychons (or their complexes) ; since these other 
psychons according to specific conditions may, or 
may not, be included in its awareness, and vice versa. 
For although the conditions may be largely or ex- 
clusively psychokinetic in any particular instance, 
in other instances they may be altogether relational ; 
and as a matter of fact are generally, as we know 
them in concrete experience, principally dependent 
upon the ubiquitous relations of time and space; 
while even the awareness relation itself turns out, 
upon fuller analysis, to be merely a peculiar sort 
of non-spacially inclusive, or whole-part relation. 

The existential world of energy, "matter", and 
mind, then, is built up for the activist altogether out 
of its fundamental entities, the psychons, their 
complexes, and the relations involved in these com- 
plexes. All of these, nevertheless, are subsumed 
under the still more general conception of activity, 
and may therefore be differentiated and quantita- 
tively determined according to their various in- 
tensities — namely, their amount, range, exclusion, 
and persistence, or any predominant one of these 
elements which may characterize them individually. 

This world of entities, relations, and their result- 
ant processes, however, does not show itself as a flat 
projection, but appears cut transversely into certain 
variously well defined levels, or planes, each of which 



178 CONCLUSION 

possesses, as its own architectonic unit, a basic com- 
plex of the units of the next more inclusive plane 
above. And, like Caesar's Gaul, these planes may be 
broadly divided into three — the meta-psychic, psycho- 
kinetic, and physical planes — each one of which is 
logically prior, as well as cosmologically funda- 
mental, to the plane or planes below. The sharpest 
break, however, is found between the meta-psychic 
plane and the planes beneath it, since the psycho- 
kinetic and physical planes together constitute the 
entire existential world as it is known to us. 

Each of these planes, also, possesses its own 
characteristic activities and units; but the ultimate 
units of each are, in their turn, unitary complexes 
of the units of the next plane above. In the world 
of physical science this is obvious — the living 
organism, for example, being a unitary complex of 
cells, cells of molecules, molecules of atoms, and 
atoms of electrons. Activism merely pushes this 
conception a step further and defines the electron, 
in its turn, as a unitary complex of psychons — a still 
more fundamental sort of activity. 

These unitary complexes, moreover, are found to 
possess characteristic intensities — efficiencies — over 
and above the mere sum of the efficiencies of their 
component units. On their own respective planes 
they are efficient as units — as simple wholes ; and the 
characteristic activities of their planes are deter- 



CONCLUSION 179 

mined accordingly. Upon the psychokinetic plane 
proper, also, a consideration of its activities has led 
us to the attempted formulation of a somewhat 
detailed hypothesis of their nature and the relations 
between them. 

Conscious entities, according to this hypothesis, 
are found to be unitary pyschokinetic complexes of 
such a sort that their awareness content is wholly 
determined by the specific intensity of the complex 
itself; this intensity, in turn, depending entirely 
upon an actual psychokinetic inclusion of whatever 
other activities form the content data. This in- 
clusion, furthermore, may be either a manifesta- 
tion of the activity of the complex in question 
itself, or, as is much more frequently the case, 
the result of its relations to external activities. It 
is, however, hardly necessary to add that the inclu- 
sion is not necessarily a spacial inclusion, although 
in sense perception spacial inclusion is involved. 

So, finally, we find that the "awareness rela- 
tion", about which there has been so much philo- 
sophic discussion, falls quite naturally into line with 
the theories of Activism, as merely a peculiar kind 
of whole-part relation — namely, psychokinetic in- 
clusion. 

In the chapter on Consciousness, also, the serious 
attempt was made to differentiate the various 



180 CONCLUSION 

psychic processes and data quantitatively, according 
to their various intensities. 

In its treatment of philosophic problems, Activ- 
ism, while in the main realistic, differs radically 
from other realistic systems in its cosmology. It is 
realistic, and not idealistic, since it holds that, in 
general, objects are essentially independent of the 
relations between them, and that consciousness is 
not constitutive. It differs from most realistic sys- 
tems, and all materialistic ones, because, for it, the 
existential world is built up of awareness units. It 
agrees, however, with Realism in holding that not 
all activities are psychokinetic, since there is no 
reason to suppose that the ideal entities and rela- 
tions of the meta-psychic plane are psychic in char- 
acter. 

On the other hand Activism may fairly be con- 
sidered largely pan-psychic — at least in so far as 
psychokinesis is given the dominant role among 
activities, and the psychon is taken as the basic 
entity of the existential world. Its pan-psychism, 
however, is limited since it assumes a plane of 
independent meta-psychic activities. It clearly 
stands, also, with Idealism in that it maintains 
the essential free efficiency of conscious entities, 
since the unitary psychokinetic complex is, by its 
very definition as an activity, itself a "that by 
reason of which change occurs'' ; the extent to which 



CONCLUSION 181 

it is freely efficient depending on its intensity, and 
especially upon the intensive element of range. 

It stands, in addition, as against the pragmatic 
philosophies, with both Realism and Idealism in 
upholding the existence, or "subsistence", of values 
and ideals as independent activities in their own 
sphere, capable also, as such, of intensive determi- 
nation. 

In regard to epistemology, it is realistic in so far 
as it holds that terms are independent of the rela- 
tions between them; that knowledge is not essen- 
tially constitutive of the existence of objects known; 
and that there is, over and above the existential 
world, a world of independent meta-psychic entities. 

From the very nature of its fundamental hy- 
pothesis, however, neither the epistemological prob- 
lem nor the mind-body problem present their diffi- 
culties in quite the same way as for other philo- 
sophic systems; and for both of these problems, so 
far as they are immediately involved in its theory, 
it has its own peculiar solution. 

Well ; at last, what bearing has all this on prac- 
tical life? The question is but too justly asked of 
any philosophic creed, as well as of philosophy in 
general, and, unfortunately for philosophy, too 
often asked in vain. 

The activist hypothesis, however, would seem 
to have a quite distinct bearing upon practical 



182 CONCLUSION 

life. In the first place, for the activist, the world 
is a real world, full of real entities and relations 
of which we are actually aware as they really are, 
in spite of the many errors which we make in 
our interpretations of them. All these things, 
moreover, whether or not we are aware of them, 
are things which make their essential differences 
according to their degree and kind, so that the 
world is through and through an efficient and 
living world. These activities, furthermore, from 
the very nature of our definition of them, comprise 
the real unitary activities which we ourselves are, 
as well as the conditions which determine our en- 
vironment, and the purposes and ideals which govern 
our conduct. 

Not only, therefore, is the realm of physical 
energy efficient, but no less, in their own way, the 
realm of consciousness and the realm of ideals. 

We live, then, in the world of activities independ- 
ent in their various degrees, of which we ourselves 
are also specific examples, the springs of whose ex- 
istence are not wound or unwound by some external 
force alone, but which wind themselves by reason of 
their own essential resilience. 

No differently than all other activities, therefore, 
are we, just to that extent to which we make our- 
selves so, fundamentally free and self-determined. 
For activity is that which is self-determined, and we, 



CONCLUSION 183 

also, are "that". The only ultimate necessity is the 
necessity of being free. A sufficiently intense ac- 
tivity binds all other activities to its own purpose, 
every change to its own vital needs, since it is by 
reason of activity that change itself exists. Free- 
dom, then, is not only a pragmatic, but an essential 
realty. It is fundamentally involved in the activities 
of every plane, so that the real efficiency of values 
and ideals, the validity and efficiency of conscious- 
ness, and the actual existence of conscious entities 
as living activities — all of these follow inevitably 
from the postulates of Activism. 

That such a view of life must possess, — as even 
itself also, an efficient activity — a determining in- 
fluence, can hardly be disputed. And if, as the ac- 
tivist holds, this philosophy of life is not only effi- 
cient but also true, there is scarcely a limit to the 
extent to which it might not affect our daily exist- 
ence by the range of its intensity. 

It gives us a world not only of what James pic- 
turesquely called "thickness", but of genuine sig- 
nificance, full undoubtedly of genuine struggle, evil, 
and suffering, but alive, self-sustaining, and fraught 
with "meaning" — awareness content — throughout. 
It gives us, also, a world in which real personal 
activities play their own essential parts, personal 
activities the extent of whose reality and the im- 
portance of whose roles depends primarily upon 



184 CONCLUSION 

their own psychokinetic intensities — a world, in 
short, in which despite many difficulties and dangers, 
any man can with justice feel secure in his own in- 
trinsic capacities, and which he may well face with 
a brave heart. 



APPENDIX 

ACTIVISM AS A PRACTICAL WORKING HYPOTHESIS. 

At the beginning of this essay Activism was 
described as a working hypothesis valuable in so far 
as it might be able to offer certain fresh, and possi- 
bly more adequate, solutions for some of the more 
obvious problems of philosophy. The immediate 
interest throughout the essay, therefore, has been 
chiefly theoretic. Activism, nevertheless, may not 
be also without its advantages in suggesting a 
method of approach to some, at any rate, of the 
more practical questions of psychology and psy- 
chiatry. 

In the chapter on Consciousness there were 
indicated certain formulae of "intensive" measure- 
ment, particularly in regard to the quantitative dis- 
crimination between sensations, not perhaps with- 
out usefulness. For if, in accordance with our 
theory, certain periodicities are actually certain 
colors or sounds, either as sensations or sense data, 
wherever they may occur, objective experiments 
upon the interrelations and combinations of these 
periodicities will furnish reliable knowledge in re- 
gard to their interrelations and summations as "sub- 
jectively" perceived — as psychokinetic processes. 
And if the objective data in any specific case should 
fail to correspond with the introspective report of 

(185) 



186 APPENDIX 

the subject, we should look for some abnormality 
such as color-blindness, tone-deafness, or possibly 
some more subtle psychokinetic disturbance ; further 
experimental research into this lack of correlation 
not improbably disclosing the more exact nature of 
the derangement. For the advantage of the activist 
point of view lies in its method, which is essentially 
quantitative not only in its application to conscious 
phenomena regarded as behavior, but to their in- 
trospective aspect as well. 

Again, as we have pointed out, the respective 
periodicities which characterize the different sensa- 
tions, taken in conjunction with their relative 
rhythmic or arhythmic conditions, may prove to be 
important factors in determining the emotional 
coloring which so often appears inseparable from 
them. The unpleasant or exciting qualities of seem- 
ingly innocuous stimuli to certain subjects, music to 
the unmusical, the red rag to the bull, the smell of 
blood to some homicidal maniac — all these may 
possibly be described in "objective" quantitative 
terms. 

Such "objective" description, moreover, might 
even become of practical moment in the diagnosis 
and treatment of some, at any rate, of the functional 
nervous disorders — as, for example, the so-called 
"affect" psychoses (manic-depressive), where nearly 



APPENDIX 187 

all the reactions of the patient are notably char- 
acterized by a painful (arhythmic) feeling tone. 

In these cases a careful selection of the stimuli 
which still possess for the patient the power of 
arousing rhythmic responses, and the accurate dis- 
crimination between these stimuli and the remaining 
stimuli which appear abnormally as arhythmic, 
might not only aid in the individual diagnosis, but 
possibly even suggest treatment — such as placing 
the patient in continued subjection to the beneficial 
stimuli, thus tending to reestablish a more normal 
rhythmic neural (or psychokinetic) condition, and 
building up, by habit, a new system which the older 
arhythmic habits would find it more and more 
difficult to disarrange. 

It is, furthermore, not impossible that experi- 
mental investigation along these general lines — i. e., 
a differential analysis of the normal and pathological 
responses to rhythmic stimuli — might assist in deter- 
mining at least some of the now obscure causes 
which produce the milder forms of psychoneurosis. 

For it seems clear that a normally rhythmic 
stimulus must become transformed in some way in 
order to acquire an arhythmic quality. This trans- 
formation might conceivably take place in the effer- 
ent nerve tracts due to pathological conditions there 
— lack of tonus or actual poisoning of the fibres; 
to abnormal functional conditions at the cortical 



188 APPENDIX 

centers; or, possibly, to a purely psychological 
(psychokinetic) situation. 

Should we, therefore, be able to discover certain 
stimuli, normally rhythmic (of pleasant emotional 
tone), which would appear arhythmic under con- 
ditions of artificially produced nerve poisoning, or 
lack of cortical blood circulation, or psychological 
disturbance hypnotically induced in a normal sub- 
ject, we might be able to discover by a process of 
elimination the more immediate causes of the trans- 
formation. 

Concerning the modus operandi of hypnotism and 
suggestion, also, about which so little is known at 
present, the activist hypothesis might have some 
contribution to make. 

To take a concrete example. A subject under 
hypnosis is shown a plain white card, and the sug- 
gestion made to him by the hypnotist that he should 
see it as blue, whereupon he sees not a white card, 
but a blue one. Now what happens here would seem 
to be as follows : The word "blue" suggested by the 
hypnotist at once gives rise, for the subject, by a 
perfectly normal process of association, to an image 
of blue. This image, as we have contended, consists 
of a certain definite periodicity — i. e., that periodi- 
city which is blue wherever it may be, in this case in 
the subject's psychokinetic complex. 



APPENDIX 189 

Due, however, to the low general intensity of the 
subject's psychokinetic activity — the dream-like con- 
dition — superinduced by the hypnotic trance, the 
specific intensity of the suggested image so fills for 
the moment the attentive field, is relatively so great, 
as to cause the image to take on the clearness and 
permanence of an actual hallucination. That this 
hallucinatory blueness is seen upon the surface of 
the card is quite natural, as for the moment in ques- 
tion the card, the image of blue, and the suggested 
association between the two, occupy almost exclu- 
sively the subject's attention. 

An image of blue suggested to a normal subject 
remains merely an image by reason of its low rela- 
tive intensity. The relatively high intensity and 
hallucinatory character of the hypnotic subject's 
blue is due entirely to the low general intensive con- 
ditions of the hypnotic trance. 

But how is the hypnotic trance itself induced? 
We know r of course the empirical methods employed 
in producing it — gazing fixedly at some bright ob- 
ject, internal strabismus, sudden words of command, 
and the like. What actually takes place, however, 
neurally or otherwise, is a mystery. "Suggestion" 
is merely a catchword to cover our ignorance. 

Yet here again Activism may offer at least a hint. 
The normal condition of the human mind (whatever 
its relation to the nervous system may be — inde- 



190 APPENDIX 

pendence, identity, or some unknown form of cor- 
relation) is a condition of great, although highly 
unstable, intensity, bombarded on every side by a 
multitude of impinging stimuli, and busily occupied 
in the essential processes of integration and selec- 
tion. In moments of relaxation, however, in day 
dreaming, sleep (as a rule), and such conditions as 
the hypnotic trance, the general intensity is con- 
siderably lowered. The "amount" of psychokinesis 
is obviously less — the mind is closed to many ex- 
ternal stimuli. The "range" is less — the organism 
"acts upon" fewer objects not itself. The "persist- 
ence" is less — conscious data linger but briefly in 
the attentive field. The "exclusion" is also less — the 
mind has less power, owing to its decreased in- 
tensity, actively to exclude stimuli, although its 
general condition has cut off many of the sensory 
channels that are open when it is fully "awake." 

Now in normal sleep these sensory channels are 
deliberately blocked. The eyes are closed, the body 
placed at rest, the attention allowed to wander, 
"hypnagogic" images are allowed free play. For 
inducing the hypnotic condition, however, a differ- 
ent method is employed. The intensive lowering 
here is brought about, not by a general shutting out 
of impinging stimuli, but, rather, by the focussing 
of the attention upon a single stimulus, or a single 
complex of stimuli, so increasing the intensity of 



APPENDIX 191 

that part of the subject's psychokinetic complex 
involved that the remainder of the complex sinks to 
a relatively lower intensive level. 

A crude physical analogy would be the application 
to a patient of an electric current strong enough to 
drive all other sensory stimuli into the background — 
reduce them relatively to a lower level of intensity. 

This condition of a partial specific intensive in- 
crease, with the concomitant general intensive de- 
crease, can be obtained by various methods for 
different subjects (crystal gazing is an example), 
but all these procedures are fundamentally similar. 

It may also be mentioned here that this descrip- 
tion, if correct, furnishes an explanation why it is so 
difficult to hypnotize the insane or the feeble-minded. 
It is, of course, because the artificial creation in 
these pathological subjects of a psychokinetic sub- 
complex of the necessary high degree of intensity is 
almost impossible to accomplish, since either the 
whole complex is at such a fixed low level (as in 
the feeble-minded) or already so dominated by a 
sub-complex of high intensity (illusion, or "fixed 
idea", as in the insane), that there is no opportunity 
for a fresh sub-complex to overcome these unfavor- 
able intensive conditions. 

This brief sketch of the theory of Activism as a 
working hypothesis, possibly applicable to some of 
the practical problems which confront the experi- 



192 APPENDIX 

mental psychologist and the psychiatrist, is, of 
course, a merely tentative suggestion. 

Should the hypothesis prove practically valuable, 
however, there are many other questions, besides 
those so cursorily touched upon, for the solution of 
which Activism, with its quantitative formulae, 
might prove of material assistance. 



APPENDIX 193 

ACTIVISM AND RELATIVITY 



Most of the philosophic implications of the Prin- 
ciple of Relativity have not as yet been developed. 
It is likely to require, moreover, a mental equipment 
of no mean order for the task of abstracting purely 
verbal deductions from the highly technical mathe- 
matical formulae in which the principle is now set 
forth. 

Since the present essay was written, however, the 
Principle of Relativity has attracted wide-spread 
scientific attention, due largely to its recent brilliant 
empirical confirmation by the astronomers. It may 
not be altogether superfluous, therefore, to point out 
some of its possible bearings upon certain specific 
solutions offered by the hypothesis of Activism. 

Arising originally out of mathematical considera- 
tions suggested by such experiments in physics as 
those of Lorentz, and Michelson and Morley, Rela- 
tivity acquired later a much w r ider significance in the 
formulae developed by Minkowski and Einstein. 

Very briefly these formulae, which are usually 
stated in terms of vector analysis, 1 are based upon 

1 They may also be expressed in quarternious or analytic 
algebra. See "Relativity and the Electron Theory." E. Cun- 
ningham. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1915. 



194 APPENDIX 

the assumption that space and time are not inde- 
pendently different, in the sense in which we have 
been hitherto accustomed to consider them ; but for 
the purposes of physics and its measurements at any 
rate, can be much more accurately defined as a single 
four-dimensional complex, mathematically analo- 
gous to a space of four dimensions. As Minkowski 
put it, "From henceforth, space by itself, and time 
by itself, are mere shadows, and only a blend of the 
two exists in its own right". 1 

Relativity holds also (hence its name) that since 
time is only a dimension, element, or "coordinate" 
in this space-time complex, there can be no "abso- 
lute" standard of time or motion in the Newtonian 
sense, and that consequently any specific velocity is 
relative only — dependent upon the standpoint of the 
observor, or the "frame of reference" to which it is 
referred. 

The immediate bearing of all this upon the theory 
of physics in general, and astronomy in particular, 
is too complex and difficult to discuss here, even if 
the writer were technically equipped. Nevertheless 
certain tentative deductions may be drawn which 
are not without interest to the general philosophic 
reader. 

1 Raum und Zeit 1908. Reprinted in "Das Relativitats prin- 
zip" Leipzig 1913. 



APPENDIX 195 

The most obvious of these is the confirmation of 
the value of a fundamentally relational, as opposed 
to a substance-quality, point of view, in the solu- 
tion of actual scientific problems, and the consequent 
suggestion that this point of view — so vitally a part 
of Activism — may prove equally valuable in its ap- 
plication to the wider problems of cosmology. For 
if, as Activism holds, relations are not only genuine 
activities, but essentally constitutive of the various 
unitary complexes which make up the existential 
world, then the relativistic method must necessarily 
be involved in the investigation of these problems. 

So, for example, since according to the relational 
attitude Science no longer considers the ether (if 
indeed it considers it at all) as the "subject of the 
verb to undulate", Philosophy also need no longer 
consider that periodicities — rhythmic changes — are 
dependent for their occurrence upon some material, 
or other "substance" in which they must take place. 

For it should be mentioned that Relativity, as 
well as Activism, holds that a motion to be real 
need not be the motion of a physical particle. All 
that is necessary is that it should be an observable 
motion. It might, perfectly well, be the motion of 
something quite "immaterial" — as a psychon. 

It points out, also, that, since time and space 
should not be considered as independent of each 
other, they are, empirically at any rate, not to be 



196 APPENDIX 

found without that which is essentially involved 
in any time-space complex — namely, motion. Should 
this be true, motion would appear as fundamental 
in the physical world — a world thus through and 
through dynamic, a world of activity; and psycho- 
kinetic change there would always involve, as its 
correlate some form of it. 

Yet while Relativity thus insists on the funda- 
mental role of motion in the physical world, this 
need not imply that psychokinetic change on its own 
plane might not occur without it. For it is inter- 
esting to note here that Clerk-Maxwell's equations 
for electro-magnetic change — which is not a change 
of motion — have, unlike the Newtonian formulae, 
remain unmodified by Relativity, thus indicating 
that change is logically prior to physical motion. 

A further philosophic implication of Relativity, 
still straight in line with the Activist hypothesis, is 
that the existential world of motion, space, and 
time, can be perfectly well described — in fact must 
be described in order fully to explain three-dimen- 
sional phenomena — as a four-dimensional world of 
fundamental efficiencies. 

The reality of higher dimensional entities has 
always been insisted upon by realistic philosophies 
which, like Activism, have frequently pointed out 
the inadequacy of the Aristotelian "substantive" 
attitude ; and it now appears as though Science, as 



APPENDIX 197 

well, was being forced to break away from the older 
logical framework. 

Relativity, then, would presumably find no logical 
objection to the hypothesis of Activism, with its 
higher dimensional entities, such as psychons and 
relational complexes ; since these latter, at any rate, 
are fundamental to the whole relativist point of 
view. On the contrary the Principle of Relativity 
has already been the means of furnishing a striking 
empirical confirmation of at least that portion of the 
Activist hypothesis which deals with the relational 
situation. 



198 APPENDIX 

WHAT IS ACTIVISM? 

A SUMMARY 

Activism is a new philosophy, or, at the least, a 
new point of view in philosophy — a new way of 
presenting certain old ideas. 

It possesses some elements in common with 
Realism — especially Neo-Realism; some character- 
istics in common with Pan-psychism ; and some in 
common with objective Idealism; but it differs in 
many important respects from them all. 

It holds that awareness is the fundamental reality 
of the "existential" world — the world of physical 
objects and conscious experience, but not because 
that world owes its being to some Thinker, or 
thinkers (Idealism), but because the ultimate entities 
of which it is composed are minimum units of 
awareness — called "psychons ;" these psychons when 
organized into electrons forming the basic units of 
the physical world, and when organized into certain 
other unitary complexes forming individual minds. 

It holds, however, as opposed to Idealism and 
most forms of Pan-psychism, but in common with 
Neo-Realism, that there are also other realities 
besides the psychons — namely relations, and "meta- 
psychic" entities, such as the manifolds of space, 
time, and the numerical series — and that these are 
not essentially psychic in nature. 



APPENDIX 199 

It holds also, with Realism, that both the existen- 
tial world of consciousness and physical objects, and 
the "subsistential" world of relations and meta- 
psychic entities are "objectively" real, and not de- 
pendent for their reality upon being known. In 
other words it holds that knowledge is not essen- 
tially constitutive of its objects. 

It describes the universe, so far as actually dis- 
covered, as consisting of certain well defined levels, 
or "planes," with their sub-planes; the three prin- 
cipal divisions being the physical, psychic, and 
meta-psychic planes, each of which possesses its 
characteristic basic units — respectively, electrons, 
psychons, and relations. 

According to this description it holds that, in the 
existential world at any rate, the basic units of each 
plane and sub-plane consist of unitary complexes 
of the basic units of the plane (or sub-plane) next 
above (proceeding "upwards" from the level of 
"matter") ; these unitary complexes of higher plane 
entities behaving, upon their own plane, as simple 
unit entities. 

It holds, furthermore, that this characteristic 
behavior of the unit entities of each plane, or sub- 
plane, is something sui generis and different from 
any possible behavior for the unit entities of the 
plane above, unless these higher plane units are 



200 APPENDIX 

organized into those specific unitary complexes 
essential for the formation of the lower plane units. 

As for example, a living cell behaves as no other 
congeries of molecules can behave, a molecule of 
protoplasm as no other congeries of atoms, an atom 
as no other pattern of electrons, and an electron as 
no other aggregate of psychons. 

It holds, moreover, that such a progressive 
organization is impossible without organizing rela- 
tions — the efficient activities of the meta-psychic 
plane. And it holds, especially, that all these entities 
and relations, both singly and in their various com- 
plexes, make a real difference somewhere, and there- 
fore constitute real efficiencies. Hence they are 
called "activities," and the philosophy which so con- 
siders them "Activism." 

It defines activity as "that by reason of which 
change exists" ; and it considers that activity, as so 
defined, is a conception universally valid for the 
description of all possible objects of which we can 
become aware, including awareness itself. 

It holds, also, that activities of all kinds can be 
quantitatively differentiated by means of a certain 
characteristic which they possess in common known 
as "intensity." And it defines intensity as consist- 
ing of four elements, three of which are primary and 
one derivative. 



APPENDIX 201 

These elements it calls, respectively, "amount," 
"range," "persistence" and "exclusion"; amount 
being the numerical quantity of activity units (upon 
any plane) which compose a given object; range 
the numerical quantity of other objects to which 
the given object can "make a difference" ; per- 
sistence the length of time (duration) through 
which the given object exists as such an object; 
and exclusion the inherent capacity of the given 
object to bar out any activities which tend towards 
its own disintegration. 

Such a principle of "intensive" quantitative differ- 
entiation, it holds, can be applied not only to 
material or physical objects, but also to the phe- 
nomena of consciousness. And it further holds that 
the use of such a quantitative method will be of sub- 
stantial assistance in the solution of many problems 
in psychology and psychiatry, both experimental and 
theoretic, including the so-called mind-body prob- 
lem ; especially since it believes that it has been able 
to furnish, for the first time, a logical explanation 
of the interrelations between conscious processes and 
physical motion. 

Specifically, it maintains that the characteristic 
activities of those unitary complexes of psychons 
which constitute individual human minds can be 
more accurately defined ; and that mental processes 
— whether considered introspectively or in their rcla- 



202 APPENDIX 

tion to the nervous system (whatever that relation 
may be) — can be more fully described, than by any 
of the older methods. 

In its insistence on an essentially relational point 
of view and the efficiency of higher dimensional 
activities, as well as upon the fact that change and 
motion may occur without being the change or 
motion of a physical particle, but in order to be real 
need only be an observable change of motion, 
Activism is straight in line with the Principle of 
Relativity which has recently received so brilliant an 
empirical confirmation by Physics and Astronomy. 

And, finally, Activism believes that a further 
development of its fundamental conceptions — the 
application of its universal formulae of quantitative 
description — together with its attitude towards the 
world order, the efficiency of organizing relations, 
and the dynamic reality of ideals and values, may 
prove of practical as well as theoretic importance in 
solving many of the scientific and social problems 
which confront us to-day. 



INDEX 

A 

PAGE 

Activity, definition of 7 

various kinds of 1 1 ff . 

Activism, as a theoretical working hypothesis 4 

as a practical working hypothesis 185 ff. 

review of, Chapter 10 175 ff. 

summary of I08ff. 

Amount, as an element of intensity 21 ff. 

Atomism 40 

" psychic 44 

Attention 126 

Awareness, as an activity 35, 51 fY. 

" not constitutive 81, 157 ff. 

definition of 168 

nature of 168 ff. 

B 

Behavior, consciousness as 34 

Bergson 2, 123 note 

Berkeley 153 

Bradley 2 t j t 153 

Buddhism 37 note 

C 

Change, without motion 89 note 

Clerk-Maxwell 196 

Color, as psychokinetic periodicity 108 ff . 

Concept 129 ff 

Consciousness, Chapter 7 92 ff. 

as an activity 18 ff. 

" definition of 92 

Cosmology, activist 146 ff. 



204 INDEX 

D PAGE 

Disintegration, of unitary complexes 49 ff. 

Dream images 165 ff. 

E 

Eastern philosophy, and the planes of activity 36 note 

Einstein 193 

Electrons, composition of 45, 89 

definition of 79 

Emerson 2, 25, 167, 172 

Emotion 132 ff. 

Empiricism, Radical 4 

Epistemological problem 152 ff. 

Error, problem of 162 ff. 

Exclusion, as an element of intensity 26 ff. 

F 

False and True 163 ff. 

Feeling 1 17 ff . 

Function and structure . , 50 ff. 

Fundmental conceptions, Chapter 1 iff. 

G 

Geometrical (figures, as activities 24, 27 

Goodness, as an activity 14, 23, 27 

H 

Hallucinations 167 

Herbert . 45 note 

Hegel 153 

Hypnotism 188 ff. 

Hume 153 

Huntington .22 note, 156 note 



INDEX 205 

I PAGE 

Ideals, as activities 12 ff. 

Idealism 153 

Image 120 ff. 

Immortality, personal 173 

Intensity, as the measure of activity 20 ff. 

u definition of 21 

as a method of differentiating psychic 

processes 104 ff. 

Interelations between psychons and electrons 76 ff. 

J 

James, William 18 note, 183 

K 

Kant 153 

Knowledge, not constitutive 155 ff. 

a priori 160 

L 

Logical propositions as activities 9, 14, 163ft. 

Lorentz 193 

M 

Mathematical entities 12 ff. 

Matter, electrical character of 12, 33 

Meaning 132 

Memory 122 ff 

Meta-psychic entities 53 

Meta-psychic plane, Chapter 8 138 ff. 

Minkowski 193 

Mind-body problem 148 ff. 

Monism 145 ff. 

Motion and Relativity 194 ff. 

M and Psychokinesis 84 ff. 



206 INDEX 

N page; 

Nerve impulse, nature of 94 ff. 

Nervous system, relation to psychokinetic complex 95 ff. 

New Realism 154 

O 

One, and the many 3, 144 ff . 

Organizing relations 32 ff ., 73 ff . 

P 

Pain 117 

Perception 127 ff. 

Periodicities 108 ff. 

Persistence, as an element of intensity 24 ff. 

Philosophy, historic problems of, Chapter 9 144 

Planes, lower and higher 38 

" interrelation of, Chapter 6 58 ff. 

Psychic Atomism 44 

" Complex 51 ff. 

Psychokinesis 46, 82 

" and motion 84 ff. 

Psychokinetic intensity 61 ff. 

Psychon 45 

Psycho-physical correlation 95 ff. 

Q 

Quantitative method of intensity 40, 175 ff. 

" of Activism applied to Psy- 
chology 104 ff. 

R 

Range, as an element of Intensity 23 ff. 

Relations, types of 64 ff. 

nature of 67 ff. 

between psychons 68 ff. 

" theory of 153 ff. 



INDEX 207 

PAGE 

Relativity, principle of 193 ff. 

and activism 193 ff. 

Retention — in memory 122 ff. 

Royce — on relations , 64 ff . 

Russell 2, 9, 22 note, 139 note 

Rhythm, importance of 1 19 ff . 

S 

Sensation 107 ff. 

Sensation, localization of 1 16 ff . 

Solipsism 71 note 

Space — perception 1 1 1 ff . 

Spencer 119 

Structure and process 55 ff- 

Subject — object relation 170 ff. 

Synapse 98 

T 

Titchener no note, 121 note 

Touch 115 ff 

Thought processes 129 ff. 

Truth 163 ff. 

U 

Universals 14 ff. 

Unitary Complexes, Chapter 5 47 ff. 

Units of Activity, Chapter 4 38 ft. 

Unpleasantness 117 ff. 

V 

Values 17 ff. 

" problem of 171 ff. 

Visual sensation 107 ff. 



^08 INDEX 

W PAGE 

Warren 107 note, 123 note, 130 note 

Will 134 ff . 

Wundt 127 note 



Zeeman Effect 101 ff. 



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